New Delhi, Jul 19 (IANS): The US Tuesday pressed India to ratify by the end of this year an international convention on compensation for nuclear accidents and reiterated its commitment to expanding the civil nuclear deal between the two countries.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is here on a two-day visit for the second strategic dialogue with her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna, said at a joint press conference here that Washington also strongly supported India's membership in international nuclear regimes such as the 46-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in a phased manner.

"We are looking for India to ratify the compensation regime for nuclear accidents by the end of this year. The liability regime should fully conform to international convention," Clinton said when asked about the NSG tightening regulations for transfer or enrichment and reprocessing technologies to countries that are not signatories to the non-proliferation treaty.

India is expected to take up the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for Nuclear Damage for ratification by its parliament soon.

"We stand by our commitment (on the 2005 Indo-US civil nuclear cooperation agreement) and want it to be enforceable," she said in reference to the CSC.

She also described the clean waiver that India obtained from NSG in 2008 was "an accomplishment" by both the US and the Indian government and made it clear that the US administration "stands" by it.