The deal would also bring India within the international nuclear control regime, without limiting India's military nuclear deterrent.

But the deal has proved elusive, with India's nuclear scientists, key security officials and politicians within the ruling government coalition all combining to say that the small print of the current draft deal is unacceptable to India.

It was not supposed to be like this. Last July 18 President Bush and India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agreement in Washington that set out the broad principles of a deal, which was presented with great fanfare as the United States recognizing and supporting India's rise to great power status.

For India's nuclear establishment, the kernel of that July agreement was the American statement that India had joined the ranks of "leading countries with advanced nuclear technology." That phrase conveys both a status and a special meaning, which includes the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, and to join the United States at the top table of the nuclear club.

Under the American draft that India is now rejecting, India has been demoted from this top table to the status of a country that has a "developing nuclear power program."

In his speech to the Asia Society last week, President Bush clearly endorsed this demotion of India's status. He said: "Under this partnership, America will work with nations that have advanced civilian nuclear energy programs such as Britain, France, Japan and Russia to share nuclear fuels with nations like India that are developing nuclear energy programs."

The reaction among India's critics of the deal was furious.

"This puts us in our place, down with the likes of Burundi," complains one senior Indian security official who spoke to United Press International on the basis of confidentiality.

"This is more than just a symbolic downgrading of our status. It leads the way to whole series of controls on our civil and military nuclear programs and our access to nuclear fuel that will erode our nuclear deterrent, expose our own pioneering researches in new nuclear technologies, and tie the hands of India as a sovereign nation by insisting we commit to this deal 'in perpetuity.' It all adds up to an insult," he added.

Certainly the U.S. draft seeks to limit the number of reactors that India can keep back for military purposes from the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection and control regime. It insists that India's new fast breeder reactors and its research labs come within that regime, and it says the deal should last "in perpetuity."

Although this draft was given an initial nod last fall by Prime Minister Singh and by the real political power in the country, Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi, the Indians now reject it claiming that the U.S. negotiators have "moved the goalposts" since the July 18 agreement. Sonia Gandhi now says that she stands by the Indian nuclear scientists who are fighting the deal tooth and nail. And threatened with a parliamentary revolt and the fall of his government, Prime Minister Singh has dug his heels in.

There are a number of reasons why the American draft seems to have changed the terms of the deal. The first is that the anti-proliferation lobby has prevailed on key figures in the U.S. Congress, who saw India's 1998 nuclear tests as the crucial first breach in the Non-Proliferation system, to tighten the terms. The second is Chinese and Pakistani pressure in Washington, who for their own security reasons seek to constrain India's nuclear potential.

The third, and perhaps most important factor for the key U.S. official, Robert Joseph of the State Department's Arms Control division, was the parallel crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. The United States was backing the diplomatic effort of the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) to bring Iran with the IAEA control regime.

The Germans in particular insisted that the only way to get international support and legitimacy for the diplomatic campaign against Iran was to work from strict legal principles -- principles that the July 18 agreement would have allowed India a special waiver to evade.

The result is that the nuclear cooperation agreement will not be signed this week. Another document will be agreed and signed and hailed as a triumphant breakthrough. It will, however, be seen as little more than a fig leaf by the Indian officials opposing the deal unless it protects their fast breeder reactors from the IAEA regime and also sets a clear date for India to be allowed to resume buying enriched uranium from the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The Bush visit will not be allowed to fail. The contentious bits of the nuclear agreement will be kicked down the road, dismissed as technical details to be worked out by U.S. and Indian technocrats. Much will be made of parallel agreements on space projects and science and technology, on joint action against cyber crime and terrorism, new joint efforts on agriculture to launch a "second green revolution" and so on.

The U.S. Embassy in Delhi is being upgraded with 13 new senior staff, and as Indian officials try to sweeten the cosmetics of the visit despite the nuclear problem, there is even talk of some special high-level Indian-U.S. commission that will work together for a breakthrough at the stalled Doha Round of the world trade talks.

But close observers will not be fooled. For the Indians, the key to Bush's promised "strategic partnership" is that they be treated and honored as equals, and they feel that they have been let down, if not betrayed. But they are patient, convinced that they have become an indispensable economic and trading partner for the Americans, and that since they have already become a nuclear power by their own efforts, their time will come.

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