WASHINGTON, Feb 21: US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns left Washington for New Delhi on Tuesday for talks seen as a last-ditch effort to iron out differences between the US and India over the implementation of a nuclear deal before President George Bush’s visit to India from March 1 to 3.

Mr Burns, the third ranking official in the State Department, will discuss various proposals, including an Indian compromise formula, for resolving differences over the separation of India’s civilian and military nuclear facilities.

The agreement, signed on July 18 in Washington, ran into trouble when India insisted that it would not allow international inspection of its fast breeder reactors as required under the deal.

Washington wants all civilian Indian nuclear facilities, including the fast breeders, opened for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Mr Burns is expected to arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday after a stopover in Moscow. He will be joined in the Indian capital by Mumbai-born Ashley Tellis. A Carnegie scholar, Mr Tellis joined the State Department recently as an adviser to Mr Burns for two months for finalising the landmark nuclear deal. Mr Tellis played a key role in arranging the July 18 agreement.

The compromise formula to be discussed between Mr Burns and Indian officials in New Delhi calls for keeping the fast breeder reactors (FBRs) out of the purview of international safeguards till 2012. The Indian side is understood to have told the US that the FBRs would become operational only by 2010 and would need another two years after that to prove themselves.

India says that the FBRs are crucial to its civil nuclear energy Programme, but US lawmakers see them as an important element of the country’s weapons programme and would like them to be brought under safeguards right away.