Thursday, June 22 2006 10:35 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Washington: The process of fine-tuning the legislation in the US Congress to implement the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal will be taken up on June 27.

The International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives will take up the process known as 'mark-up' on Wednesday June 27, sources told sources.

The original impression was that the House Committee will be doing the Mark Up on June 21 which was to have been followed by the Senate. The idea was that both the House and the Senate committees will have the Mark Ups out of the way by the end of the month with a view to paving the way for a full vote in the House and Senate chambers by the end of July.

The Bush administration is quite keen on having the legislation out of the way by the end of summer or by the end of July for Congress breaks for a recess and does not assemble until the first week of September.

Political analysts say that this is rather an 'optimistic' time frame given that Congressional elections are on November 7 and lawmakers will not be having enough time to deal with the issue given the agenda already on hand.

It has been disclosed that the Chair of the House International Relations Committee, Henry Hyde, will be introducing his own bill which will be the 'Base Bill' on which amendments will be considered and voted upon next week.

In the Senate the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee Richard Lugar and the Ranking Democrat Joseph Biden are said to be putting their heads together to come up with a legislation on which the panel can act upon. The Senate legislation at the Committee level is expected to be taken up on June 28.