(Correction in para 2)

WASHINGTON, Sep 14 (Reuters) The United States and the European Union should work together to come up with a plan for reaching a world trade agreement after talks collapsed earlier this year, a New Zealand official said.

''Our view is that Washington and Brussels will first have to build an understanding on the basic parameters of a deal ...

and then get broader wider buy-in from other G6 members,'' Peter Ferguson, trade and economics counselor at New Zealand's embassy in Washington, said during a panel discussion on trade issues.

''There then would be a good chance that this could be built up to a full deal through the Geneva negotiating process,'' Ferguson said. ''The issues are sensitive and difficult, but we don't believe the gaps are unbridgeable. They require political, rather than technical, solutions.'' The world trade talks were suspended three month ago when members of the G6 WTO leadership group -- the United States, the EU, Brazil, India, Australia and Japan -- failed to reach agreement on basic formulas for cutting agricultural subsidies and tariffs. That has been the major difficulty in the talks since they were launched in November 2001.

The main obstacle to restarting the negotiations has been the question of who would move first, Ferguson said. The United States and the EU are best positioned to do that, he said.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson is expected to meet with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab when he visits Washington this month.

Schwab has spoken of expanding the G6 group to bring in more points of view rather than engaging in one-on-one talks with the EU. Also, an earlier US-EU effort to narrow agricultural differences triggered a hostile reaction from other WTO members at 2003 meeting in Cancun.

''What we offering here is a sense that the G6 process broke down, so maybe it needs to be looked at again in terms of smaller group who could look at where the logjam is and what they could do to break it,'' Ferguson said.

REUTERS VJ RN0445