Indian-American community activists are incensed that the White House has placed a bill on trade relations with Vietnam over the Indo-US civilian nuclear bill.

The White House has marked the trade bill as top priority among three bills for the lame-duck session beginning November 13.

Sources from the US-India Friendship Council and the Coalition for Partnership with India said this amounted to a betrayal by the White House since President George W Bush [Images] had pledged on several occasions that he was committed to getting the deal consummated by Congress before the current Congress adjourned.

They said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [Images] and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the chief US negotiator of the deal were pressing for the nuclear bill to be elevated to the administration's top priority.

However, the White House, in order to have some kind of a deal for President Bush to carry to Vietnam when he attends the APEC summit in Hanoi late in November, was keen to have the trade relations bill debated and approved by the Senate.

"We are trying to see if we can make the US-India civil nuclear deal number one priority," an Indian-American the activist said.

A lobbyist for the Coalition for Partnership with India told rediff.com that while 'it's true the White House has dropped this business of the domestic surveillance and it gives us a better chance, it still seems to me pretty questionable, if not outrageous in terms of the priorities between India and Vietnam."

"In view of the President's second inaugural speech about democracy being the lodestone of our foreign policy, in view of the relative merits on the strategic basis, it's very hard to understand how [the Vietnam] priority could come about," he argued.

Congressional sources acknowledged that several issues like human rights, missing American POWs, labor issues and religious freedom 'will surely be debated and you can bet there are some amendments on tap and there's no doubt that the trade relations issue is going to take some time.'