WASHINGTON, March 18: The United States has warned India that further delay in finalising a major nuclear deal with Washington could throw the proposed agreement into limbo.

The deal, announced when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the White House, has run into trouble because of a strong opposition from left-wing allies of the Indian coalition government.

Recent reports in the US and Indian media have suggested that New Delhi may fail to finalise the deal while the Bush administration, which completes its term by the end of this year, is still in power.

US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, however, warned that by not finalising it on time India might jeopardise the deal. “And I don’t think any of us really want to throw it into that unknown limbo,” said Mr Boucher when asked what might happen if this deal was not wrapped during the remaining period of the Bush administration.

“Our goal should be to get it done because it’ll be fixed, it’ll be done, because anything beyond this administration is speculative,” he said.

In an interview to India’s Outlook magazine, released by the State Department on Tuesday, Mr Boucher said that India should try to finalise the deal before June this year.

“The timeline that we got from Congress … is it has to get (there on time) so that Congress can act in July. That would mean it has to get to Congress in June,” he said.

India’s left wing parties, however, believe that the deal would compromise India’s sovereignty by placing conditions on its dealings with nations like Iran and by restricting New Delhi’s capability to enrich uranium or conduct nuclear tests.

But the Indian government argues that the deal will not only bring US nuclear technology to India, it will also open the door to the exclusive nuclear club for the South Asian nation.

Meanwhile, there are speculations in India that the dispute over the deal could cause the left wing parties to leave the ruling alliance. Their departure would mean that India would have a minority government and in a recent interview to the Outlook magazine, India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee warned that Washington might not want to conclude such a major deal with a minority government.

Asked to comment on Mr Mukherjee’s statement, Assistant Secretary Boucher said he did not see that as a problem.

“Our basic government position is, we can sign an agreement with a duly constituted government whatever its political status — if it’s the duly constituted government of the country at the time; we can sign a deal.”

He said that Mr Mukherjee’s statement that a minority government should not sign such a major agreement was “a political judgment” and as a US government official he does not want to comment on a political judgment.

Mr Boucher also rejected the notion that the United States was trying to coerce India into signing the deal now by setting deadlines.

The US, he said, was not trying to set deadlines but to make the Indians aware of its own timeline.

“Everybody knows we have an election coming up. What that means for the deal is we have to be able to get this arrangement to our Congress before the summer,” he said.

Mr Boucher said that the US also discussed the deal with China and was hopeful that all countries would support it.

“But as far as how vocal the Chinese want to be, that’s up to them. We’ll be talking to them about these issues, and they have great concern — or great interest in it.”

Mr Boucher, who recently visited New Delhi for talks on the nuclear deal, was asked if the talks he held in the Indian capital convinced him that the deal can be done. “I tried to give people the sense that time is of the essence ... And so we’re going to try to see if we can’t have the agreement to work in those parameters,” he said.