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BRUSSELS, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Monday it had struck a new trade agreement with Cameroon, the latest former European colony to do a deal with Brussels and avoid the prospect of higher EU import tariffs from Jan. 1.

"This is an important step in Central Africa. We congratulate Cameroon on making this significant advance," the European Union's trade and development commissioners, Peter Mandelson and Louis Michel, said in a joint statement.

The EU has resisted calls from some African leaders and development campaigners to rethink its plans for new trade agreements with the nearly 80 countries of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.

Brussels says it must sign the new Economic Partnership Agreements before Dec. 31, after which Europe's long-standing preferential trade arrangements with the ACP countries will no longer be protected by a World Trade Organisation waiver.

That means it must increase import tariffs on ACP countries that have not agreed to the new trade deals by then, it says.

The EU has so far initialled interim EPAs with nearly 20 ACP countries in the African and Indian Ocean regions and with Papua New Guinea and Fiji in the Pacific.

At the weekend, it agreed a full EPA, covering services and trade-related rules as well as goods, with more than a dozen countries in the Caribbean. (Reporting by William Schomberg, editing by Tim Pearce)