WASHINGTON, April 6: At two separate hearings at the US Senate and House of Representatives, it became evident that there is a bipartisan support for the Indo-US nuclear deal although some lawmakers were concerned that the accord may encourage nuclear proliferation.

In her first appearance at Congressional hearings on the proposed deal on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a reference to the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, telling the lawmakers not to forget that strengthening India’s civilian nuclear power capabilities would move New Delhi away from seeking oil and natural gas from Tehran.

Richard Lugar, a Republican senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for ‘a thorough, bipartisan review’ of the deal in the context of non-proliferation goals, global energy requirements, environmental concerns and the US geo-strategic relationship with India.

Henry Hyde, Republican congressman and head of the House International Relations Committee, said: “The principal area of contention by far concerns the deal’s possible detrimental impact on global non-proliferation policy.

Democratic senators Joseph Biden and John Kerry said the Congress was being asked to approve the deal without having details of safeguards to be imposed on India by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“I am uncomfortable voting to change the overall structure without seeing those safeguards,” Mr Kerry said.

Most members of the senate and house committees overseeing the deal said they were not against reaching a nuclear agreement with India but were unhappy with the administration for not keeping the Congress informed.

Normally confident, Ms Rice sometimes wilted under severe questioning but kept urging the legislators to support the deal.

She warned that America’s relationship with India could be in danger if they altered or blocked the agreement. “What would happen if this initiative was defeated or changed in a way that fundamentally alters its substance?” she asked.

“All the hostility and suspicion of the past would be redoubled,” she said, recalling Cold War tensions, when relations were ‘bedevilled’ and there was ‘structural ambivalence’ between the two nations.

The secretary, however, acknowledged that the deal did nothing to curtail India’s nuclear weapons arsenal, but reminded the lawmakers that efforts to do so in the past did not succeed.

Despite her strong appeal to endorse the deal, some Republican and Democratic lawmakers said they were concerned that cutting a deal with a country that had not joined the NPT would send wrong signal to ‘unfriendly’ nations with nuclear ambitions.

“We must not encourage rogue states — and I know that’s not your intention and I stress that India is not a rogue state — by creating the sense that we only oppose proliferation until it succeeds, and then make our peace with the new nuclear power,” Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Ms Rice.

Tom Lantos, the senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said he supported the deal but issued a warning to India.

“Any military cooperation with the present terrorist regime in Iran will certainly derail this deal in Congress, and I hope that will not happen,” Mr Lantos said.

“It is time for India to recognize that its interests lie with the United States and with our allies,” he said. “India’s strength, security and economic vitality will grow in direct proportion to the closeness of its association with us.”

No time has been set for a full congressional vote on the nuclear deal. But with Bush’s Republicans expected to face a tough challenge for control of both chambers of the Congress in November midterm elections, there is speculation that the final vote will be held after the election.