The International Labour Organisation has signed an agreement with Pakistan's carpet-makers to work towards eliminating child labour from the carpet industry.
"The agreement is extremely significant," Mr Kari Tapiola, deputy director-general of the ILO, said at the signing, "because it gives all of us a unique opportunity to work together to achieve a common goal, the elimination of child labour."
Pakistan's handmade carpet industry employs more than 150,000 people, including an estimated 30,000 children. Most of them are girls earning about 100 rupees (£1.60) a day, industry sources say.
Under Thursday's agreement, 8,000 children will be sent to school and their labour monitored.
The US Secretary of Labour, Ms Alexis Herman, said in a statement that the programme would include the two elements she regarded as essential to success: "Phasing children out of the industry and into educational opportunities, and instituting an independent compliance monitoring system."
Mr Tariq Mahmood, convenor on child labour of Pakistan's carpet manufacturers' and exporters' association, said a lot of work needed to be done because the agreement covered only 30 villages, whereas carpets were being woven at 450 different places.
"Unforeseen difficulties will arise, but over a period of time I am sure the partners have built up the will to harness such difficulties," he said.
Mr Mahmood said Pakistan's carpet industry was the country's largest cottage industry, accounting for $201 million in exports in the year to June 30th, up from $170 million in 1996-97.
Pakistan's carpet-makers have drawn scathing international criticism for earning huge profits at the cost of children, an allegation the industry denies.
The industry says one obstacle to controlling child labour in the unregulated carpet sector is that the work is done within families, often in widely dispersed villages.
The children share work with their parents, which makes it difficult to eliminate child labour completely or even to monitor it.
A similar problem dogs efforts to remove child labour from the hand-stitched soccer ball industry, which is estimated to employ 7,000 children in the city of Sialkot in Punjab province and nearby villages.
Last year the ILO and Pakistan's soccer-ball makers started a $1.5 million programme to end child labour in the industry.
Pakistan's first child-labour survey, which was conducted in collaboration with the ILO in 1996, showed there were 3.6 million children between the ages of five and 14 working full-time in the country.
Pakistan says the government is committed to end child labour but that its people's extreme poverty makes complete elimination impossible.
In 1990 Pakistan ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits child labour. But lawyers say more legislation needs to be enacted to implement it.