Helms gave this assurance to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's special emissary Jaswant Singh at an informal meeting here yesterday, sources close to the talks said.

At the 10-minute meeting, Helms, who has disapproved of the US administration's avowedly pro-China stance, said he wanted to take a lead in rebuilding relationships between governments and business communities of the two countries.

The sources quoted the Senator, who is a very influential figure on Capitol Hill, as saying he was glad that both countries were talking and that very soon he would take a lead in lifting sanctions against India.

Explaining the rationale behind India's recent nuclear tests, Singh told Helms that they were conducted to meet the country's security needs and were in exercise of ``strategic autonomy''.

Helms, whose anti-nuclear stance is rather well known, had earlier criticised the tests but has of late expressed a greater appreciation of New Delhi's stand on the issue.

According to the sources, Singh also pointed out that India had already declared a moratorium on further testing and expressed readiness to make that a de jure commitment.

The meeting, convened at the initiative of leading Indian Americans here, was attended among others by Foreign Secretary K Raghunath and Indian ambassador to the US Naresh Chandra and Republican Senator Rod Grams and Democrats Paul Sarbanes and Charles Robb besides several notable Indian Americans, Sekhar Tiwari, Swadesh Chatterjee and Krishna Srinivas.

According to the sources, Singh also asked the Senators to help put Indo-US ties back on track.

Bilateral ties received a severe setback after US sharply criticised India's tests ignoring New Delhi's security concerns and demanded that India accede to the CTBT unconditionally and slapped economic sanctions.