WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- Trade envoys from the United States and Europe said that they had made progress in resolving differences to break an impasse on global trade negotiations, but they declined to say specifically where the differences had narrowed, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

    "We are clearly making progress," U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab said Monday after a day of talks with visiting Peter Mandelson, the European Union's commissioner for trade. "Perhaps there's some showing of momentum here."

    Mandelson said he had come to Washington "looking for new impetus, and I believe we've found it."

    He said his new confidence was inspired not only by his talks with President George W. Bush but also by those with the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the new Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

    The current round of global trade talks, known as Doha round, after the city in Qatar where the talks started in 2001, were suspended last summer by the director general of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, when it became apparent that Europe and the Untied States could not reach agreement on lowering tariffs and subsidies on farm goods.

    The final offer of the United States then was to limit farm subsidies to 22.5 billion dollars a year, less than half what the United States is entitled to impose under current agreements.

    But because the actual amount of subsidies for 2005 was 19.7 billion dollars, Europeans claimed that the United States was trying to increase subsidies, not lower them, according to the report.

    The Bush administration has called on Europe to lower its tariffs on farm products by more than 50 percent of their current level. A coalition of rich and poor nations has called on Europe to lower tariffs by 36 percent, said the report.

    Lamy has said that a final trade agreement can occur only if the United States and Europe increase what they are willing to do, and decrease what they are demanding from the other side.

    But on both sides, farmers make up powerful political blocs, even though they account for less than 5 percent of the population and of the economy, the report said.