US ambassador David Mulford, however, warned tricky issues needed to be discussed during the talks between US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Indian officials.

"There is considerable work to be done on what is a very technical and detailed agreement," Mulford said in a statement.

"We want to finish as soon as we can and both sides are positive we can do this," the diplomat said of the deal which was agreed on during a visit by President George W. Bush to India last year.

India, however, sounded non-committal on the upcoming talks, which come a week after experts from the two countries met in London to iron out unspecified "technical issues."

"The visit will also be the occasion for further discussions on the proposed bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreement," the Indian foreign ministry said without elaborating.

The Press Trust of India said the two-day talks beginning Thursday were likely to focus on testing and reprocessing.

"The key negotiators will aim at resolving differences on aspects like reprocessing rights and continuity of civil nuclear cooperation if India were to conduct an atomic test in the future," it said, quoting unnamed officials.

Indian government sources say India's plans to build fast-breeder nuclear reactors, which produce plutonium that can be used in weapons, were still a subject for negotiation. India wants to use such reactors to reprocess nuclear fuel in contradiction of US law.

The deal aims to reverse three decades of US sanctions on nuclear trade with India, even though New Delhi has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

Earlier this month Burns told a Washington-based think-tank both sides "were 90 percent of the way there."

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