MUMBAI, Dec. 3  -- The terrorists who attacked Mumbai, India, last week spent the past three months in Pakistan planning their strike, an Indian police official said Wednesday.

Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh Maria, who is leading the investigation, said he learned the information with the only know surviving attacker, CNN reported.

The suspect is Mohammed Ajmal Qasab, 21, from Pakistan's Punjab province. He is alleged to have spent the past 18 months training at camps run by the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.

ABC News reported that Qasab's family was promised almost $4,000 if his attack succeeded.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 3  -- U. S. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen pressed Pakistani officials Wednesday to explore all links between the Mumbai attacks and groups based in Pakistan.

Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with senior Pakistani officials as U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Indian leaders to discuss the bloody assault on the Indian financial and entertainment hub last week, the Defense Department said in a news release.

The coordinated attacks killed 170 people. India blames the attacks on militants from Pakistan.

Mullen met with Pakistani civil and military leaders, including Pakistani President Asif Ali Zadari, and National Security Adviser Mahdue Durrani, the U. S. Embassy in Islamabad said.

Washington  - A US panel on weapons of mass destruction got first-hand experience of the threat of terrorism when they tried to visit Pakistan in September as part of their preparation for a report released this week.

As they were making a connecting flight in Dubai on their way to Islamabad on September 20, US officials called them to stop the journey.

"The State Department said, 'We've got good news and bad news for you. The good news is you're not in your hotel. The bad news is your hotel is gone'," recalled former congressman Timothy Roemer, a member of the congressional-chartered Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism, on Wednesday.

New Delhi, Dec 3 : External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in a joint briefing with his American counterpart Condoleezza Rice, said on Wednesday that India would act decisively to protect its territorial integrity, adding that the deadly attacks on Mumbai were carried from inside Pakistan.

“I informed Dr. Rice there is no doubt that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai were perpetrated by individuals who came from Pakistan and whose controllers are in Pakistan,” he said at a joint press conference.

Mukherjee said there is a deep outrage in India against recent attacks and emphasised on India’s right to protect itself.

New Delhi, Dec 3 : The attack on Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, by terrorists who subjected the city to unprecedented violence for three days during the last week of November, has many lessons for the nation to learn.

The terrorists may not have been able to bring down the Taj Mahal, the Oberoi-Trident, Café Leopold and Nariman House, but they have been successful in achieving their main objectives -- which was to kill as many people as possible and depict the city, and India, as an unsafe place.

Kolkata, Dec 3 : The All India Minority Forum (AIMF) demanded immediate action against Pakistan based terror groups at a prayer meeting here today.

The prayer meet was held in memory of the victims of Mumbai terror attacks.

The President of AIMF, Idris Ali said that politicians both at the national and state levels should realise that there was an urgent need to provide security to the people. The government should ensure peace and security for all citizens irrespective of religion, caste, creed and class.