"We will work with Congress to get this agreement approved. We're hopeful," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said of prospects for the pact, which Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed in July 2005.

US lawmakers returned to work Monday after their August recess -- and are expected to leave Washington again in late September to campaign ahead of the November 4 US elections, leaving little time for action on the agreement.

"We urge Congress to act soon on this important measure," said Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino, who expressed hopes that the president's Republicans and his Democratic foes would rally behind the accord.

"Signs for it to be able to pass are good given the bipartisan support it's enjoyed in the past, I don't think that anything's changed in that regard, so if they are able to get anything done this could be one of them," she said.

US congressional approval is the final hurdle for the agreement, which offers India access to Western technology and cheap atomic energy as long as it allows UN nuclear inspections of some of its nuclear facilities.

The statement came after the United States won approval in Vienna on Saturday for the one-off waiver for India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls the export and sale of nuclear technology.

The Group was founded to stop other countries emulating India's example in using imported technology to make an atomic bomb.

Amid a controversy in India over the accord's impact on the country's military nuclear program, Johndroe declined to confirm directly that the United States would cut off nuclear fuel supplies if India tested a nuclear weapon.

"India knows what the international reaction to a test will be," he said.

The world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter for decades has been the United States. But emissions have also rapidly grown in the developing world -- and oil-import dependent India is now among the top five emitters.

The deal "really does deepen the US-India relationship on many levels, and it will help meet India's surging energy needs as well as help us bring India along as a solution to helping solve the challenges that we face on global climate change," said Perino. "Civil nuclear energy is the way of the future."

But the landmark deal has stirred huge controversy in India.

Both the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and the communists slammed the deal, saying it would curb India's military options and bring the country's foreign policy too much under US influence.

"India has walked into the non-proliferation trap set by the US," senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said.

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