Wellington - New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark said the country would sign a "comprehensive" and "high quality" free-trade agreement with China on April 7, according to reports Sunday.

Clark told New Zealand's political television programme Agenda that she and her counterpart Premier Wen would witness ministers sign the agreement in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Clark confirmed that the agreement would allow some specialist Chinese workers, such as chefs or Chinese medical practitioners, to work in New Zealand.

She also said China had committed to a phased reduction of agricultural tariffs.

But Clark told the programme that she could not provide further details ahead of the April 7 signing.

Clark said China valued the free trade agreement with New Zealand in part because it provided a "template" the Asian power could use in future negotiations.

The agreement also "showed strategically that it [China] can have these high quality arrangements with a Western country," Clark said. Two-way trade between China and New Zealand - one of the most liberalized Western economies in the world - is currently worth more than 4.8 billion New Zealand dollars (3.8 billion US dollars) a year.

Chinese exports account for about eighty per cent of that value.

The agreement is expected to bring 200 to 400 million New Zealand dollars per year to the New Zealand economy for the next twenty years.

Prime Minister Clark also told the television programme Agenda that she would raise China's treatment of Tibet directly with Premier Wen. She would be the first Western leader to directly raise Tibet with the premier since the riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa more than a fortnight ago.

She told Agenda she would not question the status of Tibet within China, but "I will raise it as an issue of how human rights can be respected in the country."

One minister in Clark's multi-party government has declined the prime minister's invitation to witness the signing on April 7 because of China's recent actions against Tibet.

But Clark said that trade allowed New Zealand greater access to the Chinese authorities and enabled the country to express its concerns over human rights.