NEW DELHI: The announcement that the anti-terrorism panel meeting will be held in March coincided with an alleged suicide bombing at Islamabad airport on Tuesday, and a day after Indian police claimed to have arrested four alleged members of the Jaish-i-Mohammed group from Delhi’s posh Connaught Place market.

Indian police said the four men from the group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir were arrested on Sunday. They are thought to have been plotting bomb blasts in crowded market areas of the Indian capital.

Sixty-six people were killed when three blasts ripped through markets in New Delhi in 2005, days before the biggest Hindu and Muslim festivals of the calendar. Two hundred commuters were killed in Mumbai in July when bombs placed in packed coaches of several trains went off simultaneously.

It was a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Sept 16, 2006 in Havana that decided to institutionalise an India-Pakistan joint anti-terrorism mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations.