By Arun Kumar

Washington, June 25 (IANS) The Bush administration has mounted a concerted campaign to get quick Congressional approval for the India-US nuclear deal, with the White House declaring it the president's "top priority" amid a few contrary voices heard in the legislature.

"Let me put it this way, the president considers this a top priority. Period. And wants both houses of Congress to act on it and act affirmatively," White House spokesman Tony Snow declared on Friday, a day after Vice President Dick Cheney sought bipartisan support for one of Bush's "most important strategic foreign policy initiatives".

While Cheney chose the forum of US-India Business Council to urge the leadership of the India Caucus in the two houses to usher through the "critical" agreement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is reported to have personally contacted many lawmakers to ensure their support.

Bush administration's key negotiator on the deal, Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, is said to be spending much of his time on Capitol Hill, seat of the US Congress, to counter opposition to the deal.

With the foreign relations committees of the House and the Senate scheduled to meet on June 27 and 28 respectively to review supporting legislation, the administration has repeatedly claimed to have the necessary bipartisan support for the deal. The vote in the Congress itself is not expected before the middle of July.

Republican Senator John Cornyn, who leads the India Caucus in the US Senate along with Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, Friday took the floor to answer Byron Dorgan, a critic of the deal who has vowed to do all to delay if not stop it.

The deal is in the best interests of the United States as it will make them partners with the world's largest democracy, marking an important step in their strategic relationship, he said.

For it will permit peaceful civilian use of nuclear power while avoiding the threat of proliferation and the possibility that terrorists might acquire a nuclear weapon or it might proliferate to some other irresponsible party and then endanger America or its allies.

"As we all know, India already has a nuclear weapon, so it is not a question of whether it is going to acquire one. It already has one. It has demonstrated its responsibility and its willingness to work with peace-loving partners like USA," Cornyn said.

It will be another way the United States and India can work together to make the world a safer place, he said rejecting Dorgan's suggestion that the nuclear deal with India undermined US non-proliferation policy of many years and would come in the way of its resolve to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Nowhere is the threat of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism, or the need to safeguard nuclear weapons more important than in South Asia, the home to Al Qaida, who seeks nuclear weapons, Dorgan said describing it as an area where relations among regional nuclear powers -China, India, Pakistan - have historically been tense.

Giving legitimacy to the nuclear arsenal that India secretly developed is not going to help US convince other countries to give up their secret nuclear programmes, said the senator from North Dakota.

Calling the India deal "one of the most significant mistakes I can conceive of", Dorgan vowed to "certainly do everything I can to slow it down. I prefer to stop it. I don't know if I can stop it. I will try to do that. If not, I will slow it down a lot..."

While the deal has won critical support from the heads of both Senate and House panels, a few other legislators and some scientists have opposed the deal with 37 Nobel laureates branding it as a "formula for destroying American non-proliferation goals".