The US Senate is to vote late Wednesday on the deal, which would lift a three-decade ban on civilian nuclear trade with India imposed after the country carried out a nuclear test in 1974 and refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The agreement, a key foreign policy initiative of President George W. Bush, was approved by the US House of Representatives at the weekend by a 298-117 vote.

Some lawmakers had proposed a last-minute amendment to the so-called 123 agreement to define the consequences if India carried out an atomic weapons test, but were told this was not necessary.

"If India resumes testing, the 123 agreement is over," said a senior Republican Senator Richard Lugar, an ardent supporter of the deal, citing US laws and Bush administration statements.

Experts expect the agreement to be adopted amid bipartisan support for a strategic initiative by Bush to improve relations with India, the world's most populous democracy.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the US Arms Control Association, said while the Senate "will likely defeat" the amendment and "approve" the agreement, key Senators had underlined the "consequences if India makes the mistake of resuming nuclear testing."

India has argued that it has the sovereign right to conduct such a test, while statements from the Bush administration have indicated the deal would be off if one were carried out.

The deal offers India access to Western technology and cheap atomic energy in return for New Delhi allowing UN inspections of some of its civilian nuclear facilities.

Military nuclear sites will remain closed to international inspections.

India has not signed the NPT, which is an international treaty dating from the 1960s that is intended to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Democratic Senator Jeff Bingaman, among those pushing for the amendment to end the deal if India carried out a nuclear test explosion, said the agreement would send a wrong signal to nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea.

It would also make India a "de facto" nuclear weapons state without them having to sign the NPT. "India gets to have their cake and eat it too," he said.

"The agreement also makes it difficult for us to justify to other NPT signatories such as South Africa, Taiwan and Brazil which have postponed their own nuclear weapons programs as part of signing up for the NPT," Bingaman said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice voiced hope Tuesday that the pact would clear its final legislative test.

"I certainly hope that it can get done, because it would be a landmark agreement for India and the United States," said Rice, who has lobbied Congress hard to back the agreement.

Lugar called on lawmakers to approve the deal, saying the national security and economic future of the United States would be enhanced by a strong and enduring partnership with India.

"With a well educated middle class that is larger than the entire US population, India can be an anchor of stability in Asia and an engine of global economic growth," he said.

Critics say Bush is fast tracking the agreement through Congress to achieve a rare foreign policy success before he leaves office in January.

"President Bush and his aides were so eager for a foreign policy success that they didn't even try to get India to limit its weapons program in return," The New York Times said in an editorial Tuesday.

"They got no promise from India to stop producing bomb-making material, no promise to expand its arsenal, and no promise not to resume nuclear testing," it said.

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