Washington:The Bush administration has said that it will positively look at a proposedUN-supervised International Nuclear Fuel Bank under the aegis of theInternational Atomic Energy Agency.

The issue came up for discussion at the testimony of the Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice who came before the House Foreign Affairs Committee defendingthe US$ 36 billions plus State Department allocation for Fiscal 2008.

Leading Democratic lawmaker Tom Lantos introduced the bill authorising USparticipation in the Bank.

"We would like very much to work with you on this legislation, because itfalls very much in the context of what the President thinks we need to do.

"He (President Bush), at the NationalDefenceUniversityin '04, talked about the need to have ways for countries to pursue civilnuclear power without having a fuel cycle because, obviously, enrichment andreprocessing can be used for the moment of nuclear weapons and, therefore,there's proliferation risk," she told Lantos, also the Chair of the HousePanel.

"But we want countries to have access to civil nuclear power. And, so,breaking that link between fuel cycle and having civil nuclear power with somekind of fuel bank, we think, would be a very good idea," Rice added.

"And it would be important not just for Iran, because one thing we need tosay loud and clear to the Iranian people is: We do not wish to deny them accessto civil nuclear power. The problem is when the technologies that they use toacquire that civil nuclear power can lead and appear to us to be leading to thepursuit of a nuclear weapon," she said.

,