The European Union's agriculture chief said yesterday after a week of talks that there were new grounds for hope of progress as the clock ticks down on the WTO's free-trade agenda.

Farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said a consensus on agriculture between the EU and the United States was now nearer at hand, after months of stalemate at the World Trade Organisation on the all-important issue.

"I'm more optimistic about the next weeks than I was before we arrived," the Danish member of the EU executive said after a week of discussions with US government officials and senior members of Congress.

"We have stopped talking across each other and are talking to each other. We are going from the process and onto the substance of the negotiations," she said, noting the WTO faces a "very tight time-frame".

"It's a huge offer at a stage when we are discussing domestic support (for farmers)," Fischer Boel said, while stressing that the EU has already gone a long way in reforming its costly agricultural subsidies.

The Hong Kong forum is meant to set the seal on four years of talks launched in Doha that aim to deliver a comprehensive treaty for free trade by 2006.

The US is willing to cut farm subsidies to secure a new world trade deal, but wants greater export opportunities for its farmers in return.