External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna, speaking ahead of Thursday's official "strategic dialogue" meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said New Delhi was putting in place new liability laws that mark the final piece of the 2008 deal.

"We are well within the agreed timelines. Of course the government is committed to put in place a nuclear liability regime. We will move forward," he told the US-India Business Council, a business promotion group.

The civilian nuclear deal with the United States ended India's nuclear isolation after its 1974 atomic test, giving it access to US technology and fuel and setting the stage for foreign companies to enter a civilian nuclear energy market worth about $150 billion.

But endorsement of the liability law is imperative for private US firms reluctant to do business in India without legislation that underwrites their compensation liability in the case of industrial accidents.

The bill's progress in Parliament has been slow, leading some US analysts to express frustration.

But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government has vowed to press ahead, despite political sensitivities over limiting liability for foreign suppliers.

in a country where a 1984 gas leak in a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal city killed about 3,800 people in one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

French and Russian nuclear firms already plan to set up in India, and New Delhi has offered to tender construction of two plants, a business opportunity worth $10 billion, to US-based firms GE-Hitachi and Westinghouse Electric, a subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba Corp.

Progress toward implementing the nuclear cooperation accord is one of the main issues on the table at this week's US-India dialogue meetings, which both sides say are aimed at deepening political and economic cooperation between the two giant democracies.