WASHINGTON, June 16: A top US Senator warned Congress on Friday against rejecting a nuclear accord with India as lawmakers move closer to making a decision on the controversial accord after lengthy debate. Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the powerful Senate foreign relations committee, said ‘a Congressional rejection of the agreement — or an open-ended delay — risks wasting a critical opportunity’ for the United States to boost ties with the world’s biggest democracy.

It was the strongest statement Mr Lugar has made to date regarding the nuclear deal with India, the senator’s office said.

The foreign relations committees of the House of Representatives and Senate are expected to meet at the end of the month to decide whether to endorse the deal clinched by Mr Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March.

The panels’ findings would then be submitted to the full Houses for consideration.

Mr Lugar, speaking at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, said both houses of Congress are satisfactorily ‘working through language that would guide our policy toward India’.

He described the nuclear pact as ‘the most important strategic diplomatic initiative’ undertaken by President George Bush and a departure ‘from the crisis management mentality that has dominated foreign policy’ in recent years.

The United States and India were in opposite camps during much of the Cold War.

The nuclear deal, which requires mandatory support from American legislators for implementation, would allow India, not a signatory of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), access to long-denied civilian nuclear technology in return for placing a majority of its atomic reactors under safeguards.

But the agreement does not have the wide and bipartisan backing in Congress.

Some legislators want to first have a look at a set of international safeguards under which India and the United States would implement the deal.

The safeguards would be incorporated together with other technical details in another bilateral agreement, which the lawmakers also wanted to study before endorsing the deal.

The safeguards are being negotiated between India and the global atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) while moves to frame the bilateral agreement reportedly hit a snag after India refused to accept a provision barring it from conducting atomic tests.—AFP