Both the administration of President George W. Bush and Congress are confident the deal would win majority bipartisan support in the committees before they go for voting in the two full chambers possibly next month.

"There appears to be pretty strong support" in the Senate committee for the deal based on a bipartisan bill to be introduced by Republican Senator Dick Lugar and Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, Lugar's spokesman Andy Fisher said.

Lugar, chairman of the Senate panel, has posed to the Bush administration a total of 187 questions on the deal following concerns by lawmakers over the repercussions of extending civil nuclear technology to India, which is not a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

In the House international relations committee, "there is tremendous support although not necessarily unanimous," said Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for the highest ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee Tom Lantos.

While majority of the House panel's lawmakers are expected to vote to endorse the deal, they could hold off on a vote to change US nuclear law until the completion of a final agreement and safeguards India would be subjected to, congressional aides said.

"We expect a lot of discussions and committee members with concerns will have the opportunity to raise them," Weil said, adding that the House panel's debate would be based on a bipartisan bill by Lantos and Republican committee chairman Henry Hyde.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the chief US negotiator of the deal, also predicted easy passage of the bill.

"I'm not going to be so rash, perhaps foolish to predict a vote count but we are very confident that we have majority support in the House and Senate," he said following extensive discussions with Congressional leaders.

The US Atomic Energy Act of 1954 currently prevents the United States from trading nuclear technology with nations not party to the NPT such as India. It has to be amended for the deal to be effective.

Under the deal first agreed upon by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July last year, the United States will aid the development of civil nuclear power programs in India in return for New Delhi placing its civil nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards

India tested nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998 and is currently banned by the United States and other mostly industrialized nations from buying fuel for atomic reactors and other related equipment as a result.

Some legislators against the deal say it would not only make it harder to enforce rules against nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea, but also set a dangerous precedent for other countries with nuclear ambitions.

"We intend to make the case that the purported benefits of this deal are an illusion, and the risks to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime are quite real," said House Democratic Representative Ed Markey.

Last week, a distinguished group of nonproliferation experts from across the political spectrum wrote a letter to Congress arguing that the nuclear deal would put the United States in violation of its central obligation under the NPT -- not assisting a non-nuclear weapon state in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

They charged that the deal could free up India's "limited domestic nuclear fuel making capacity to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons."

Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power reactors but can also be employed to manufacture the explosive core of atom bombs.

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