A day after India and the U.S hit an impasse over their proposed nuclear cooperation agreement, External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee today said there was no roadblocks" but certain issues needed to be resolved to seal the deal.

Declining to give a time-frame by when an agreement to operationalise the deal could be inked, Mukherjee also said there were some " legal constraints" for the U.S administration.

"No, there is no no roadblocks as such. Certain issues need to be resolved for which sincere efforts are going on," Mukherjee told reporters when asked about the fate of the deal on the sidelines of the conference of South Asia Free Media Association(SAFMA) here.

Identifying the "issues", Mukherjee said "We have committed to the Parliament that the nuclear agreement will be within the framework of July 18, 2005 agreement and March 2006 separation plan." "We are trying to resolve these questions," Mukherjee said while hoping that "It will be possible to arrive at a final agreement by reaching a middle path sooner."

After three days of negotiations which ended in New Delhi yesterday, India and the US moved "much closer" to an agreement but persisting "gaps" prevented a breakthrough. India said "some distance" was still to be traversed before the two sides could finalise the agreement.

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