"Friends of India are very pleased with the agreement, but non-proliferation people think the (U.S.) government has gone out of its mind to propose it," an expert in South Asian affairs who preferred not to be named said in Washington Saturday.

The deal proposed by President Bush could -- some analysts believe -- mean the end of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. That's a high price to pay to consolidate India's new relationship with Washington as a counterweight to China's rising influence in Asia, and a disincentive to any future Chinese aggression against Taiwan, an ally the United States has pledged to defend.

President Bush drove a truck through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) when he reversed three decades of U.S. policy and agreed to give India what the 35-year-old international accord specifically prohibits. Washington has committed itself to provide civilian fuel and reactor parts, and encourage its allies to do the same, in return for an Indian commitment to stop weapons testing, and to allow inspections by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Bush even said he would seek India's inclusion in a group experimenting with the development of the world's first reactor using deuterium--a substance extracted from seawater - as its main fuel.

What India will not do in return is more striking than what it will. Several of the 187 states that have so far signed the NPT did so on the understanding that they gave up any plans to develop nuclear weapons and therefore became eligible to receive civilian nuclear technology and fuel from the world's leading nuclear energy suppliers. New Delhi will not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- at least not in the foreseeable future; nor will IAEA inspectors have access to India's nuclear weapons facilities.

The Indians tested their first nuclear weapon in 1974, and carried out a second test in 1996. The objective was to stay ahead of India's nuclear rival Pakistan, and three years ago a nuclear war between the two states was narrowly avoided. The Indians built their first civilian nuclear plant in 1969 at Tarapur, near Mumbai: two boiling water reactors connected to the grid. They are now building a pressurized heavy water reactor at the same location. Construction has begun and the plant's two units are scheduled for completion by 2007. Fuel for these reactors was among the items that the Bush administration has agreed to supply.

Pakistan, also a non-signatory of the NPT, immediately demanded the same treatment and pointed out its "far more prominent" role in supporting the U.S.-led war on terrorism. But a Bush administration official last week countered criticism of the deal with a "good guys-bad guys" response, pointing out that, unlike Pakistan, India did not sell its nuclear technology to rogue states that could not obtain it legally; and unlike Iran did it hide its real intentions.

Addressing the U.S. Congress last week, Singh got a standing ovation when he said, "I would like to reiterate that India's track record in nuclear nonproliferation is impeccable."

India has "told the truth about what it's doing and is now willing to subject itself to intrusive inspections," said R.Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs. "Iran and North Korea signed the NPT and then did not abide by the rules. India wants to abide by the rules. India needs energy and prefers clean energy which means nuclear. It is worried about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and it is worried about terrorism. Those are our interests as well. And we know what kind of country India will look like 25 years from now. A pluralistic democracy." To the Bush administration this is a key point. Who knows what China will look like after a quarter of century of rapid change?

U.S. law needs to be adjusted to allow the export of nuclear technology to India, but Bush administration sources say they do not anticipate any problems securing congressional approval for the deal. Both sides of U.S. politics have bought into the relationship in the biggest way. Washington also needs to persuade other leading suppliers -- Russia, China and the European Union - not to oppose the agreement. But a European diplomat in Washington said Saturday that the prospect of being able to sell nuclear components to India is likely to be a persuasive argument.

But what if Russia, for example, decides to sell nuclear technology to Iran, citing the same conditions? Critics of the deal see this as only one of the short term risks of President George Bush's decision.

The timing is particularly awkward with the Europeans attempting to persuade Iran to agree not to develop a military nuclear capability, and with North Korea returning to talks with the negotiating quartet - the United States, China, Japan, and South Korea - about its own nuclear weapons. The Bush deal is ironic in another sense: The European Union has been trying without success to persuade Washington to agree to lifting the strictly conventional weapons embargo imposed against China following the Tienanmin Square massacre in 1989.

Curiously, the nuclear agreement received a mixed reception in New Delhi, where there is a debate over the problems of separating the civilian from the military nuclear facilities, so that India's nuclear weapons could be shielded form the inquisitive eyes of foreign inspectors. Besides, Singh's's breakthrough on the nuclear front did not entirely compensate for the disappointment of the prime minister's failure to persuade President Bush to support India's aspirations to gain a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council.

But there is no escaping the impact of the agreement. Bush's announcement of the deal, commented the newspaper The Australian, "was one of those moments when you can feel the tectonic plates of geo-strategic power shifting."

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