Washington, June 25: Pakistan has a long way to go before it will be ready for free trade with United States, a senior administration official said dashing President Pervez Musharraf's hopes that the trade and investment framework being signed between the two nations would lead to free trade. "Oh, there are so many steps (before free trade can be contemplated by the US with Pakistan). There was a discussion (between President Geroge W.Bush and Musharraf at Camp David) on liberalizing trade between our two countries," the official said adding that Bush told Musharraf that Pakistan needed to undertake a lot of liberalisation for free trade between the two countries to start.
According to the official, "the President said: Look, a free trade area is a two-way commitment that involves a lot of issues and, frankly, would require a lot of liberalization of Pakistan's economy."
In terms of a free trade area, he said "we have got a long, long way to go, and the Pakistanis understood that we are perfectly willing to be moving down that road but that requires movement on both sides and, frankly, it will require increasing liberalization with the Pakistani market."
The two presidents, he said had a good discussion on educational reform of the Pakistani educational system.
President Musharraf said Pakistan is making progress, not as fast as he would like, he admitted, but already some 1200 madrassas have registered with the government which meant that they will get support of Pakistani government and will commit themselves to teaching a partly secular curriculum.
Bureau Report