Hailing the Indo-US civilian nuclear energy deal as a 'win-win' proposition, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad El Baradei has expressed the hope that members of the American Congress, which is yet to approve it, will also see it that way.

"We have a number of very important issues on our agenda, ranging from making sure that India become a partner in the nonproliferation framework. To me, this is a win-win agreement and I hope it will be also for Congress," El Baradei said, after an hour-long meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [Images].

"We also are trying to look to the big picture in making sure that we have innovative measures to ensure that sensitive proliferation technology, like enrichment or reprocessing is contained. I talk about multilateral centres, multinational centres," he said.

• A good deal

Rice also said that India was a topic of discussion with the IAEA chief - "We've also talked about the US-India deal and Dr El Baradei has been very supportive -- not because he is trying to intervene in US-Indian relations, but as we have talked about it because we need to broaden our concept of non-proliferation regime in order to deal with anomalies like the Indian situation."

The statements of both Rice and El Baradei are important in terms of the civilian nuclear deal since the legislative process is at a critical stage with the Bush administration keen on getting the formal approval of Congress at least by the summer. 

• The Iran vote and after

The IAEA chief and Rice also stressed that Iran was a major topic of discussion and this too has to be seen in the context of the efforts of the United States, Europe, Russia [Images] and China at London [Images], where they are supposed to be inching their way forward to some sort of a package to wean Tehran away from the nuclcear weapons technology route.

"We talked, obviously, about Iran which is a current crisis we are facing. We discussed ways and means for Iran to come into compliance with the requests of the international community to build confidence in the peaceful nature of its programme.

"I believe that it's very important for Iran to take whatever measures required for the international community to have confidence that its programme is peaceful in nature. I believe also it's very important that Iran goes back into negotiation with the Europeans," El Baradei remarked.

Rice in her observations emphasised that Tehran has to 'rapidly comply' with the demands of the international community.

Complete coverage: The Indo-US nuclear tango