Questions should be put behind: Whit House on nuke deal

WASHINGTON: The White House has said that the questions for the record released by the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on issues pertaining to the Indo-US nuclear deal should be put behind so that concerned parties can move forward and "get this agreement done".

At a White House briefing, Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked if President George W Bush was aware of the "secret letter" that spelt out bluntly the position of the United States that if India tested nuclear weapons there will be a cut in supplies.

"The questions that were made public reiterated our longstanding position. And we hope that this -- we could put this behind us and be able to move forward and get this agreement done," she said.

"Let me just reiterate something that the State Department has said in the past couple of days, questions for the record -- they're also called QFRs -- that are asked for from Congress to the administration are often not made public.

"Congress usually treats those as a direct communication between the executive branch and the legislative branch," Perino added.