NEW YORK, March 3: The United States should grant Pakistan a free trade agreement that it has granted Jordan and Morocco and a host of other countries as “it would cement the economic wellbeing of the average Pakistani to the well-being of the United States as it would mean more jobs in textile factories in Pakistan,” said the New York Times.

“It would mean fewer unemployed people on the street with nothing to do but listen to the exhortations of … mullahs,” the newspaper said in an editorial on the day of American President’s arrival in Pakistan.

But it said: “Alas, don’t expect to see anything close to that coming out of this trip. The Bush-Musharraf summit meeting is one between two leaders far more interested in guns than butter.”

It noted that “President Bush’s trip today to Islamabad could have been a chance to try to bridge this stretch of the chasm between Muslims and Westerners. Unfortunately, everything sets it up to be just the opposite, starting with the fact that it is being overshadowed by Mr Bush’s misbegotten nuclear pact with Pakistan’s blood enemy, India.

While observing that “since Mr Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Pakistanis have been demanding similar treatment”, the Times however, noted “the Pakistanis won’t get that deal, and any time spent discussing the issue is wasted time that could be spent on other ways in which America should be developing its relationship with the Pakistani people.”

The Times said: “At this moment in time, there is no more meaningful a place than Pakistan to illustrate the state of America’s relations with the Muslim world. The country is ground zero in the fight against global terror. Anyone needing a fresh illustration need look no further than yesterday’s bombing outside the American consulate in Karachi, which killed four people. Beyond the hunt for Osama bin Laden on the Afghan-Pakistan border, Pakistan is where radical fundamentalism is increasingly taking the moderate Islamic world hostage.”