In a breakthrough after five years of talks on so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA), negotiators from the EU and Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho initialled deals covering trade in goods and development, the Commission said.

"This is an historic step forward in the relationship between the European Union and southern Africa," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson -- who has faced stiff criticism from aid campaigners over the EPAs -- said in a statement.

"I welcome the commitment shown by both sides and the leadership shown by SADC (the Southern African Development Community) in completing these essential negotiations."

Angola wanted to join the agreement "as soon as possible" while Namibia and the region's economic heavyweight South Africa "will determine their participation in the agreement in the coming days", the Commission said in a statement.

South Africa has a separate trade deal with the EU.

The European Commission wants to formally sign EPAs with the six regions of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP) of countries before December 31.

The deals are likely to be mostly interim, goods-only agreements signed at first only by subgroups in each region because of opposition from some countries.

The interim deals would be followed by talks next year on more sensitive issues such as investment rules and services.

Mandelson has said the new agreements will help nearly 80 ACP countries develop regional economies of scale that will attract foreign investment, helping them break their reliance on basic commodity exports.

Development campaign groups such as Oxfam have criticised the deals as unfair to the ACP countries, potentially opening up their economies to too much competition from the EU.

The campaigners have accused the EU of strong-arming the ACP countries into signing the new deals before January 1.

That is the expiry date of a World Trade Organisation waiver that has allowed long-standing preferential trade arrangements between the EU and the ACP to continue, even though they were ruled illegal by the WTO.

EU imports from the SADC region, excluding South Africa, are dominated by a few products such as diamonds from Botswana, petroleum from Angola, fish and beef from Namibia, sugar from Swaziland and tobacco.