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ISLAMABAD, Friday (AFP) F-16 jetfighters and total debt forgiveness are shaping up to be Pakistan's price for US demands that it rein in fighters along its borders with Afghanistan and India, analysts and reports said as President Pervez Musharraf headed to the US Friday.

General Musharraf is due to land in the United States via London for a nine-day trip visiting Boston, Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and meeting President George W. Bush at Camp David on June 24.

Washington's "tight" war on terror ally, as Bush calls Musharraf, will seek the writeoff of Islamabad's remaining 1.8 billion dollar debt to the US, a new trade pact giving Pakistani exporters greater market access, and an end to military sanctions, officials have said.

The release of F-16s paid for by Pakistan more than a decade ago would be a top priority.

Politically, some analysts believe Musharraf may seek approval for tough action against the opposition for virtually paralysing the eight-month-old parliament with a campaign to make him surrender the power he seized in a 1999 coup.

Two US-based publications reported this week that the long-awaited release of 28 F-16s, paid for by Islamabad but blocked in the early 1990s because of Pakistan's nuclear program, is nigh because of its lynchpin war on terror role.

"Those aircraft, along with debt forgivenss and trade status, will be Washington's reward for Pakistan's support in the war against al-Qaeda," the private Stratfor think-tank wrote in a report published on its website June 17.

The Defence and Foreign Affairs journal said the release of new Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters would be announced during Musharraf's visit.

The Pentagon late Thursday denied the reports, calling them "completely false".

US demands of Pakistan focussed on curbing militants making forays into Afghanistan and Indian-controlled Kashmir, analysts said.

"The Bush administration has a wishlist of its own where Pakistan is concerned - including winning an agreement to cease cross-border operations in Afghanistan as well as into Indian-controlled Kashmir," Stratfor said. US demands could go as far as the thorny area of hot pursuit rights for its troops in Afghanistan, it added.

US troops are thwarted in their al-Qaeda hunt by the easy passage of rebel fighters over the porous border into Pakistani tribal regions. n Afghan President Hamid Karzai has personally handed to Pakistan the names of four top Taliban commanders believed to be leading assaults on US and Afghan troops from the Pakistani borderlands.

"The Pentagon would definitely be concerned about what is now seen as the renewed Pakistani assistance towards resurgent neo-Taliban," Islamabad-based analyst Aqil Shah told AFP.

"American commanders in Afghanistan are not happy with what the Pakistanis are up to. There's a concern that he's delivered on al-Qaeda, what about the Taliban? There are allegations that Pakistan through the Taliban is destabilising the Karzai administration." The prospect of sacking the parliament as a way out of the political stalemate may also be discussed, Islamabad-based diplomats believe.

"Musharraf probably will take some discreet sounding. He'll say 'it's not working, parliament is in a state of complete gridlock'," a Western diplomat told AFP.

"He's becoming increasingly frustrated, he can't do anything with his reform agenda. He is now staring down the barrel of an eight-month-old parliament, and no legislation has been passed except the budget."

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