A senior Brazilian official welcomed Friday Brazil's decision to postpone trade sanctions against the United States over its cotton subsidies.

The two countries reached a preliminary agreement Thursday that Brazil would not apply WTO-sanctioned reprisals against the U.S. until late 2012to give it time to change its agricultural regulations.

The agreement strengthened international trade and would reduce illegal competition, said Miguel Jorge, the Brazilian Development, Industry and Foreign Trade minister.

But Jorge said, if the U.S. did not make appropriate changes in its agricultural regulations by the end of 2012, Brazil would enforce the trade sanctions.

"If we feel at any moment that there was an infraction, we will go back to the sanctions," the minister said.

Brazil was authorized to apply the tariffs in 2009 after a long dispute in the World Trade Organization (WTO) over illegal cotton subsidies granted by the U.S. government to U.S. cotton producers, which were damaging international trade.

The sanctions amount to 830 million U.S. dollars a year, of which 590 million U.S. dollars are to be applied over products and about 240 million U.S. dollars in suspension of intellectual property rights.