WASHINGTON, May 23: The United States and India are “90 per cent” of the way toward sealing a landmark deal on nuclear energy, a top US official said on Wednesday ahead of pivotal talks in New Delhi.

Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said he was waiting to hear back from US nuclear experts who attended two days of lower-level talks this week in London with Indian counterparts before firming up his trip to India.

But the visit “I think will happen in the next week or two,” he said at a Heritage Foundation seminar on US-India ties, which have warmed up dramatically after decades in the chiller during the Cold War.

After the last round of US-India nuclear negotiations in Washington on May 1, the US State Department said Burns would head to New Delhi in the later half of the month “to reach a final agreement.” ”We're 90 per cent of the way there,” Burns said of the nuclear pact, which was first agreed in July 2005 but remains held up by disaccord on issues like access for UN inspectors to both civil and military atomic sites in India.

India has agreed as part of the US deal to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, and to allow the civilian sites to be inspected.

Burns said that aside from inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, India must also agree to demands for export and non-proliferation safeguards by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Acceptance of those demands would allow India to remain outside the global non-proliferation treaty but still receive cutting-edge nuclear technology.

“If India wants the benefits of civil nuclear trade with the United States, or France, or Russia, it is going to need to subject itself to inspection by the IAEA,” Burns said.

But he added: “I believe that India has the best of wills and the best of intentions.

“I think you're going to see us make this leap,” he said. “When we do that, it will be one of the great achievements in the US-Indian relationship going back to (Indian independence in) 1947.”

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said after the technical talks in London: “Some further work is required to bridge the remaining gaps and both sides agreed that discussions will continue.”

Indian sources and experts say India's plans to build fast-breeder nuclear reactors are still a subject for negotiation. India wants to use such reactors to reprocess nuclear fuel in contradiction of US law.

Other differences include a clause that would permit the United States to cut off critical fuel supplies if India breaches its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing.

Indian critics of the deal have attempted to stall it for fear that it will hamper India's nuclear weapons programme, nine years after it staged atomic bomb tests that sparked a tit-for-tat response from arch-rival Pakistan.—AFP