Interior ministers from some 20 Arab countries have begun a meeting in Tunis expected to focus on a joint strategy for fighting terrorism. That's a term they use to refer to militant Islamic extremists. Participants have been debating such a pact for several years, but the issue has taken on greater urgency following massacres in Egypt and Algeria carried out by extremist groups. Barbara Plett reports from Cairo.

The interior ministers will be discussing ways to implement a joint anti-terrorism strategy that they adopted last year. In the document, Arab governments promised they will not allow their territory to be used as a launch-pad for terrorist attacks.

The strategy also calls on them to freeze assets suspected of financing acts of violence, and to extradite wanted militants to each other. The idea for the anti-terrorism pact came from Egypt and Algeria - the two Arab countries which have been hit hardest by militant Islamic extremism.

Both recently witnessed unprecedented massacres. Egypt has blamed much of the violence on what are known as Arab-Afghans - Islamic revolutionaries who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Those who returned home have been credited with instigating the latest wave of Islamist violence. Others have sought refuge in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Sudan, from where they are accused of directing militants back home.