With a few details remaining to be resolved, the agreement is likely to be signed next week by US Trade Representative Rob Portman and Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, the newspaper said, citing industry sources who requested anonymity because they had learned the details from US administration officials at a confidential briefing.

Portman is due to hold talks in Beijing on November 14 to discuss copycat abuses of foreign brands by Chinese manufacturers and lack of access for US companies trying to enter the booming Chinese market.

According to industry sources, The Washington Post reported, the textiles deal would begin on January 1 and last through 2008 -- a concession by China, which wanted it to expire in 2007.

It provides for a progressive increase in imports of most major textile and apparel products from China -- by eight to 10 percent in 2006, by 13 percent in 2007 and by 17 percent in 2008. That represented a concession by the administration of President George W. Bush, which had proposed keeping annual growth close to 7.5 percent.

If approved, the textile agreement would ease Sino-US tension over the issue, which erupted early this year after a decades-old global quota system on textiles was scrapped on January 1.

In the absence of an overarching agreement, the US Commerce Department has been resorting to temporary quotas to curb the Chinese imports, to the anger of Beijing.

Bush administration officials did not respond to requests for comment, the Post said.