Switzerland and the United States have reached agreement on a double taxation treaty, the Swiss finance ministry said on Friday, a key step towards removal from a list of tax havens.

Switzerland, whose private banks manage around $2 trillion of foreign wealth, aims to secure 12 new bilateral tax deals by the end of 2009 which could allow it to be removed from an OECD "grey list" of states which need to improve tax cooperation and avoid possible sanctions from G20 nations.

Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz had asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to drop a tax evasion case against UBS in return for a new tax accord, which might struggle for ratification in Switzerland if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) persists with its pursuit of the bank.

The Swiss-U.S. double taxation agreement had never been dependent on the court case against UBS, a spokesman for the Swiss Finance Ministry said.

He added, however, that it could be difficult to get the deal through parliament without a solution to the UBS case.

"Switzerland and the USA have agreed at a technical level to the extension of administrative assistance in tax matters under Art. 26 of the OECD Model Convention and have initialled a revised double taxation agreement (DTA) on 18 June 2009 in Washington," the ministry said in a statement.

This is the sixth such agreement the Swiss have struck, after Denmark, Norway, France, Mexico and one other unnamed country.