As rescue missions go, it's a humdinger. Pakistan must raise an estimated $4 billion in 30 days to save its economy from collapse. The International Monetary Fund's task: to couple a large slug of the necessary cash with much-needed reforms in a package that doesn't topple its client, a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, into anarchy.

Of all the countries nursing severe economic damage, Pakistan appears the most precarious. Growth is slowing sharply while inflation hovers at a 30-year high. The current account deficit has widened to 8.5 per cent of gross domestic product; the fiscal deficit is reckoned to be more than 7.5 per cent. Most foreign investors left the country months ago and the value of the rupee is in freefall. So was that of the stock market before the regulators stepped in to freeze trading against a background of rioting investors who, having lost their shirts, ransacked the nation's exchanges.

With the level of cash reserves barely sufficient to cover a month's imports, a balance of payments crisis is looming.

Analysts now believe that an IMF rescue package, possibly tied to separate streams of funding from countries such as the US, China and Saudi Arabia, is all but inevitable. The only question, they suggest, is what strings will be attached.

Most think that Pakistan could reasonably be asked to spend more on education and less on defence — a reversal of the priorities of a recently deposed military dictator who spent most of the $12 billion donated by the US in recent years on arms. In other areas, Pakistan has made moves of which the IMF is likely to approve. The recent axing of fuel subsidies, for instance, is a gesture towards the kind of unpopular fiscal austerity that the IMF has traditionally prescribed.

But any IMF package will inevitably have a political mission thrown in. Pakistan, a key ally in the US's "War on Terror" is a nuclear power that has a jihadist insurgency raging on its border with Afghanistan. Kashmir, the region it disputes with India, another nuclear power, flared up this summer and remains a potential atomic flashpoint. That Pakistan's emergency talks with the IMF are being held in Dubai and not Islamabad because of concerns of a terror attack speaks volumes.

Amid this, the IMF cannot afford to fan discontent: too many dangerous groups have an interest in destabilising the country. The IMF has a golden opportunity to insist on vital reforms but must tread gently.

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