“Had the Clinton administration been prepared to offer the BJP-led government the deal which President Bush is willing to offer to Manmohan Singh and company, (the) Indian side would have gone for it and they also would have been astonished given what they knew about our position on the issues involved,” Talbott said.

Speaking to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk the Talk broadcast today, Talbott, who is now president Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, said the deal was an “agreement that was brilliantly negotiated by the Indian side,” and that “it will be better for everybody if India were to implement the deal (now).”

When asked if he is astonished at the BJP’s opposition, he said, “My astonishment has its limits.”

Asked if he had met BJP’s Leader of the Opposition L K Advani and apprised him of his views, he said, “I haven’t seen Mr Advani or anyone from the Opposition.” Asked if he would tell BJP leaders that they would have settled for less on the deal, Talbott said, “Ever so politely.”

Talbott’s comments come at a time when the BJP-led Opposition is protesting against the Indo-US nuclear deal with Advani telling visiting Defence Secretary Robert Gates this week that it was too late for it to go through.

“...The deal from our side, the American side is done,” said Talbott. “I was relieved when it went as smoothly as it has on the American side because I want us to turn the page and get on to the next chapter. And it blows my mind when I see the kind of difficulty it has got into on the Indian side.”

Asked about US Senator Joseph Biden’s remark that the next US administration might re-negotiate the deal, he said, “I doubt it”.

On the deal and the next US president, Talbott said that whoever wins among the three contenders Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, “Indians can be confident that there will be continuity (in US policy towards India).”

But he indicated that there would be a significant change in context. “If you have a Senator Obama or a Senator McCain or a Senator Clinton assuming the office of the President of the United States, any of those three administrations will be dealing with a new mood in the United States with regard to the nuclear issue. That mood is likely to translate into the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), an important four-letter-word in the Indian language,” Talbott said.

“And that in itself will sort of change the context within which the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation deal will be addressed. That doesn’t mean going back and re-negotiating it. But what it does argue for is the Indian side, doing what I think Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants to do — get the thing done, get the implementation begun, because if India does that, the next administration, the next US Senate in Congress will be dealing with a fait accompli than inherit something that is in limbo.”