Washington/ New Delhi, Feb. 9: The Bush administration’s deal-makers with India have been gripped by a sudden sense of desperation that their calendar for orders worth billions of dollars in nuclear plants may be altered by the compulsions of domestic politics in New Delhi.

Ending weeks of silence on the Indo-US nuclear deal, America’s pointmen on the nuclear issue in both Washington and New Delhi today launched a concerted, two-pronged effort to get India to pursue the deal without further delay.

Nicholas Burns, the US under-secretary of state for political affairs, today bluntly said “we don’t have all the time in the world” to get the India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and then go on for change of rules by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) which are necessary for the export of nuclear plants and equipment to India.

“Time is wasting,” Burns told Reuters in an interview.

“We don’t have all the time in the world, particularly since this is an election year... and so we hope very much that this process can now be expedited.”

Almost simultaneously, the US ambassador to India, David Mulford, virtually threatened in an interview to CNN-IBN to be aired on Sunday that if the deal is “not processed in the present (US) Congress it is unlikely that this deal will be offered again to India. It certainly would not be revived and offered by any administration, Democratic or Republican.” He just stopped just short of saying that it may be now or never for the nuclear deal.

Burns said “this agreement needs now to move forward more quickly. It has been suspended for a number of months and we hope, very strongly, that the Indians will be able to find their way forward and move this rather quickly in the weeks ahead.” His emphasis was on “weeks ahead” instead of the months that the Bush administration has hitherto been talking about.

A new undercurrent in both interviews was the chance that India could do business in nuclear plants and equipment with countries other than the US once the NSG cleared nuclear commerce with New Delhi.

Burns tried to allay fears within the US energy industry that this was likely.

“We have a very strong, friendly relationship with the Indian government. It is a government that time and again has proved it is a trustworthy partner.”

Mulford also touched on the same point. “There is no agreement or undertaking that they (India) have to do their business with the US. It is a competitive market and my belief is that, if this (the 123 Agreement) goes through, India will become the centre of a civil nuclear industry in the world.”

A number of developments in India appear to have persuaded the Bush administration that they must reassess their strategy and take a new initiative to get India to move on with the nuclear deal.

Speculation has been rife in New Delhi about changes in the UPA government, including a cabinet reshuffle, according to cables sent to the US state department by the US embassy in New Delhi, sources here said.

The Americans are anxious that the set-up they have lobbied with for orders in military, nuclear and other sales may be disrupted by any imminent political change.

The Bush administration is particularly worried that cabinet and other changes in New Delhi may upset the apple cart that their defence secretary Robert Gates is carrying to New Delhi at the end of this month.

The Bush administration is also aware that signing of nuclear related agreements with Russia and France cannot be indefinitely held up and that these may pave the way for nuclear commerce with Paris and Moscow to the exclusion of Washington.

Mulford and his bosses in Washington are also closely following the visit of Russian prime minister Victor Zubkov to India, which starts on Monday.