The world's biggest democracy looks to be coming in from the nuclear cold - thanks to some strategic foresight from President Bush.

Bush last Thursday asked Congress to approve a deal he'd inked with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let American nuclear-tech firms trade with the US ally.

The pact follows his success last week in convincing the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group to drop sanctions against India, which stemmed from the country's flouting of international opinion in building and testing nuclear weapons.

It's about time. India, after all, could well become one of America's most important 21st-century allies.

It's a stable democracy with a booming market economy - and, sandwiched between a rising China and a chaotic Pakistan, it's in precisely the area of the world where the United States needs real friends.

Indeed, cultivating that friendship - even while pressing arch-rival Pakistan for crucial War-on-Terror aid - has been one of Bush's unheralded diplomatic achievements.

And ending India's nuclear-pariah status is the logical next step. The trade restrictions have left it fast running out of fuel for its civilian nuclear power plants.

True, lifting the sanctions will let India build more bombs, which may well spark a new regional arms race - or hamper nonproliferation efforts elsewhere.

But those fears would be more credible if international scolding had deterred the nuclear ambitions of rogue states like North Korea and Iran.

And they pale in comparison to the importance of encouraging a rising democratic power in a very dangerous part of the world.

The White House announced last week that Bush would be hosting Prime Minister Singh in Washington later this month.

Congress should welcome him by swiftly approving the nuclear accord.

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