Washington: Pakistan is to intensify this week its push for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, as its economic recovery seeks to gather pace and offset the cost of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the simmering crisis with India.

Pakistani Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz told AFP in an interview that he was "cautiously optimistic" that a long-term goal of sealing a trade pact was attainable.

Aziz, in town for International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings, will also urge US officials he meets this week, including Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, to grant wider access to US markets for textiles, a key Pakistani export.

And he promised no let-up in a reform drive designed to inject the macro-economic stability so prized by foreign investors into a previously chaotic economy.

Aziz's sights are set firmly on a free trade pact with Washington, which would further pry open markets in the United States, Pakistan's largest trading partner.

"Clearly the FTA is a long drawn-out process, there are issues like environmental issues, labour issues, its not just opening trade to both countries."

"I am cautiously optimistic," he said, though he declined to put a time-frame on when talks might begin, or how long a deal would take to conclude.

Knitting trade pacts is notoriously time-consuming, and Aziz added that Islamabad would watch closely as the United States strives to finally conclude FTA's with Singapore, the first such pact with an Asian state, and Chile.