A top Bush Administration official has expressed hope that the civil nuclear deal with India will be done and that the Americans, in about twenty years, would be able to look at India as being one of its two or three most important relationships in the world.

"The nuclear deal is done. We hope that will happen. I think Americans might be able to say 20 years from now, India is one of our most two or three most important partners in the world," Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said in an interview with PBS.

"That will be a tremendous strategic change for us from the relationship we've had with India since 1947, 60 years now, and a great benefit to us, and I think it will be to the Indians as well.

"India is a global country. It's a democracy. It tends to see the world the way we do. It has an interest in stability in South and East Asia the way we do," he said.

Burns argued that the United States' evolving strategic relationship with India went beyond the fact that the country is growing economically.

"I think well beyond that. We live in a globalised world, where many of the problems confronting us do not lend themselves to the actions of even the most powerful state, the United States.

"You need friends. You need allies. You need countries to help you build democracies overseas, to resolve conflicts like the one in Burma that we're witnessing so dramatically this week, to overcome global climate change and international drug and criminal cartels," Burns remarked.