The United States has said that it has broadened the non-proliferation regime by bringing India inside it through the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that even the International Atomic Eenergy Agency believed that with the Indo-US nuclear deal, India had come inside the non-proliferation framework.

"Just on the India point, because I think it's a very important point, many people, including Mohamed El Baradei (the head of the IAEA), believed that by finally dealing with the India anomaly, if you will, that we've actually broadened the proliferation regime... to put India inside the non-proliferation regime," Rice remarked.

She was responding to Senator Barack Obama who expressed concern that the "structure" of non-proliferation "may not sustain itself over the long term" given the Indo-US nuclear pact, and that observers had claimed the Non Proliferation Treaty was "fraying" around the edges.

"Given the deal that was reached with India, I think there is concern that the structure that had been in place may not sustain itself over the long term if we don't make sure that we're gathering up some sort of international consensus about what the rules of the road are. I know that the administration takes this seriously, but I don't think that there has been as systematic an approach as I would like to see," Obama said. 

Responding to Obama's point on India being an "anomaly", Rice said, "Well, I think that could be the case. But, of course, there's a very specific circumstance of the India-Pakistan, South Asia context" and added, the "most likely problem" would come from an "Iranian" nuclear weapon.

Rice emphasised the non-proliferation credentials of the Bush administration and maintained it had has been pursuing a number of elements that were outlined in a presidential speech in 2004 and pointed to the success of counter-proliferation efforts, especially the busting of the nuclear components smuggling network run by disgraced Pakistani scientist A Q Khan.

"The non-proliferation side has been very important to us ever since the president gave, at the National Defense University in 2004, a major non-proliferation speech. And we've been pursuing a number of the elements of that outline. Obviously, you do have to deal with the bad actors, Iran and North Korea. There's a counter-proliferation element of that, of course, which means that you have to have effective means for detection, effective means for interdiction," Rice said.

Rice said the US had also created the Proliferation Security Initiative which involved 80 countries which regularly share information about dangerous cargoes.

Speaking of non-proliferation success, Rice mentioned the detection of a shipment on its way to Libya from North Korea and the Libyan decision to give up weapons of mass destruction.

She said the US had also "taken down" the A Q Khan network adding, the NPT could not have foreseen networks that are not state-based, but black market entrepreneurs and called it an "important success."

Rice also pointed out that the administration was engaged as well on how to go about the central problem of the fuel cycle.

"There's a loophole in the NPT which says that countries can pursue civil nuclear power. And it doesn't say by what means," she pointed out, emphasising the issue with Iran and why it is that Tehran had to suspend enriching and reprocessing.

"So the president spoke about this problem and suggested that there should be some kind of international or fuel suppliers group that could provide fuel to countries that wish to pursue civil nuclear power without having the whole fuel cycle. We think that the Russian programme Bushehr in Iran is on exactly that model. When President Putin and President Bush were together very recently in Vietnam, they agreed to have talks about how Russia and the United States might move forward on strengthening of the non-proliferation regime based around issues of the fuel cycle," Rice told Senator Obama.