"We have great respect for the leadership and role of Congress and separation of powers and we are happy to talk to Congress about the various ideas about how to arrive at a satisfactory positive vote in the House and Senate to approve the deal the administration has put forward," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said.

He will kick off a series of meetings with key lawmakers Wednesday, beginning with Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives International Relations Committee.

Lantos unveiled a proposal last week to give new momentum in Congress to the landmark nuclear deal clinched on March 2 by President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The deal would allow India, which is 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 international safeguards.

But it does not have the wide and bipartisan backing in the legislature amid fears by some in the Bush administration that a crowded Congressional year and mid-term legislative elections in November could stymie the deal.

Republican and Democratic legislators want to first have a look at a set of safeguards under which India and the United States would implement the nuclear agreement as well as a bilateral agreement that would capture all the key ingredients of the deal.

The safeguards are still 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.

Under compromise legislation proposed by Lantos, US lawmakers would explicitly welcome the deal but would not immediately make amendments to US law to implement the agreement until all details were worked out.

"With so few legislative days left in this crowded Congressional year, there is not enough time to develop the consensus necessary to accomplish all the administrations objectives," Lantos said.

"We need to come up with a legislative compromise that will keep the momentum for this important agreement moving forward," he added.

Burns refused to divulge any counterproposals by the administration to legislators.

"We think we have put our best foot forward and now it is up to Congress and we will be meeting with members of Congress to try to gain as much support as we possibly can," he said.

Burns said he spoke to Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran over the phone on Tuesday and that they had scheduled a meeting in London next week to further discuss the deal.

"We agreed to meet, to go over all aspects of the US-India agreement so that we can move this along on both sides," he said.

The Bush administration says the deal offers a crucial energy alternative to rapidly-growing India and would elevate relations between the world's largest and oldest democracies to a new strategic height.

But several American weapons experts have warned that forging a civilian nuclear agreement with non-NPT member India would not only make it harder to enforce rules against nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea, but also set a dangerous precedent to other countries with nuclear ambitions.

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