Wednesday, September 13 2006 17:31 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Amid fears that the vote in the US Senate on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal may be delayed, American Ambassador David C Mulford hoped the house would clear the bill this month and sought expeditious negotiations on the bilateral agreement.

"We hope the senate will vote this month," he told the third Indo-US economic summit here.

"If there is Senate action, we believe there will again be a large majority," he said.

He said the two bills then must be reconciled in a conference between the House of Representatives and the Senate and the final bill must be passed by both houses for signature by President George W Bush.

The fears of a delay have arisen in the wake of an insistence by some senators that the legislation on the civil nuclear deal be taken up for voting along with a domestic bill that provides for the US signing an additional protocol with the IAEA on nuclear safeguards.

Mulford said while the civil nuclear agreement was being ratified by the Congress, the two countries must complete negotiations on a bilateral pact for peaceful atomic cooperation for the change in law to be effective.

"We both need to move forward on this legal framework expeditiously, working hard to complete the process before the present Congress completes its term this year," Mulford said.

His remarks came ahead of a crucial meeting between Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and his US counterpart Nicholas Burns in New York to work out details of the bilateral nuclear agreement.