"As it stands, the situation is both strange and unusual in that the Indian authorities know more about this important proposal than we in Congress," said Henry Hyde, chairman of the House of Representatives' international relations committee.

He said Congress had received "little if any information" from the administration regarding either details of its ongoing negotiations with the Indian government or legislation it planned to introduce to implement the deal.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate had written to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, requesting that the administration begin immediate consultations with Congress, Hyde told a hearing Wednesday where nuclear experts testified that the deal was fraught with danger and against US interests.

Robert Einhorn, a former top non-proliferation official in the US State Department, said efforts to strengthen US-India ties "should not be pursued in a way that undermines a US national interest of equal and arguably greater importance -- preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"That is precisely what the Bush administration has done in the nuclear deal," said Einhorn, currently a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Even though India is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, President George W. Bush agreed to give the Asian giant access to civil nuclear energy technology under a deal he signed with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18.

Under the complex deal, details of which are being negotiated by the two governments, India has to first separate civilian and military nuclear programs and place its nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections.

In addition, the US Congress would have to amend laws prohibiting US nuclear cooperation with India, deemed by Washington to be not in compliance with key nonproliferation practices and conventions.

The United States had placed sanctions on India after its second round of nuclear tests in May 1998, but agreed after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks to waive those and other sanctions in return for support in the war on terrorism.

Under the July deal, the United States had also agreed to lobby allies to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India.

"This agreement could pose serious risks to the security of the United States," warned David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

"With a weak and poorly enforced export control system, Indian companies could become major suppliers to the nuclear weapons programs of adversaries of the United States, in some cases possibly using technology which the United States orginally provided," he said.

Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center here, cautioned that the civilian nuclear deal together with a space cooperation pact with India, "if not properly clarified by Congress, are fraught with danger."

"Congress certainly should be in no rush to get their implementation wrong," he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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