Following the signing of the India-US civil nuclear deal, the visit of a US commercial nuclear industry trade mission, which was scheduled to arrive today, has now been indefinitely postponed due the terror strike in Mumbai last week.

The US-India Business Council (USIBC), in asociation with the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), armed with a US Department of Commerce certification, was earlier scheduled to have been in Delhi from 2 December to 9 December, the largest trade mission of US commercial nuclear executives ever to visit India.

The delegation of the USIBC-NEI commercial nuclear mission was to have been led by Jack Fuller, CEO of GE-Hitachi and included more than 50 senior executives representing more than 30 of the world's leading commercial nuclear companies.

The USIBC-NEI mission was to have come to India just two months after the historic opening of India to civilian nuclear trade with the US and the world.

Announced on 18 July 2005 during the celebrated Washington visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the US-India nuclear deal was finally consummated with the signing on 9 October, of the US-India 123 Agreement by secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice and foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee.

The inking of the bilateral 123 Agreement capped a whirl of approvals - from the Indian government's successful trust vote on 20 July to unanimous nods by the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Suppliers Group in September, to a final triumph in the US Congress in early October.

The USIBC-NEI Delegation would have met with senior government of India officials, the leaders of India's top public-sector undertakings, and senior executive counterparts from India's rising global companies and the mission would have started from New Delhi, and later on to Hyderabad and then Mumbai.

USIBC president, Ron Somers had said at that time, "We applaud the visionary and courageous leadership of India's political leaders and that vision, supported by India's partners, put an end to India's nuclear isolation and made the US-India commercial nuclear trade possible."

The US commercial nuclear industry leads the world in size, performance, innovation, and engineering worldwide. The US is the largest generator of electric power in the world - with 27 per cent of the world's total installed capacity and nearly double the number of reactors as France.

According to a USIBC communique, the cost of nuclear power equipment in the US between half and on-third that of the cost of other major countries. In recent decades, the US reactor companies and civil nuclear engineering companies have remained at the forefront of innovation and engineering worldwide.

US industry, including many of the commercial nuclear suppliers on the mission, provided massive political support for the US-India Civilian Nuclear Initiative.

Through the USIBC-led Coalition for Partnership with India, US industry joined with Indian Americans and policy experts to win final approval by the US congress for ending India's nuclear isolation.

The US-India Business Council (USIBC), formed in 1975 under the aegis of the US Chamber of Commerce, is a business advocacy organisation representing 300 of the largest US companies investing in India, joined by global Indian companies, whose mandate is to deepen US-India commercial ties.