Washington : American officials say the case of two Indian nationals arrested on charges of illegally exporting US missile technology to India could affect the India-US civil nuclear deal.

The Washington Times Tuesday quoted an unnamed Bush administration official as saying the case could undermine congressional support for the deal that would resume the sale of non-military nuclear power goods and non-military space launch equipment to India.

But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States and India have "strong" ties and "this will not change" because of the missile technology case.

"This is a law-enforcement matter that began before our efforts to conclude a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement," he said. "The arrests of these individuals are not connected to our efforts to conclude an agreement."

Henry Sokolski, director of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Centre in Arlington, said the arrests "raise questions about whether or not we can actually trust the Indian government when it says it's not going to divert high technology we're going to be giving them in the nuclear and missile areas for illicit weapons activity."

The Indian duo, Parthasarathy Sudarshan, 46, and Mythili Gopal, 36, both of Simpsonville, South Carolina, were arrested Mar 23 based on a 15-count federal grand jury indictment in the District of Columbia unsealed Friday.

Sudarshan, head of a company called Cirrus Singapore, was due to be arraigned Tuesday in US District Court before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. Gopal, an official with Cirrus USA was released after her court appearance in South Carolina.

According to the indictment, the two conspired with at least two other Indians to circumvent the US Arms Export Control Act between 2002 and 2006 by purchasing US electronic components used in missiles, sending them to Singapore and then re-exporting them secretly to India's missile and space-launch manufacturer.

The items included Static Random Access Memory computer chips made in Phoenix that are designed to withstand extreme temperature changes and have applications for missile guidance systems.

They were shipped without a required export license to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), an Indian government manufacturer of space launchers and missiles, the indictment states. One e-mail in the case quoted Sudarshan telling others involved in the case that "our intention is not to make profit on this order but to service VSSC."

Other related equipment was described as high-technology capacitors, semiconductors and resistors-all with missile applications. The defendants provided false end-user documents to hide the Indian missile maker as the purchaser, the indictment stated.

The goal of the illegal exports was "to supply government of India enterprises on the entity list with critical electronic components needed in the production of missiles and missile launch vehicles," the indictment said.

The entity list is a list of companies and foreign government entities that are restricted from buying US military goods.

Illegally exported US components, including the i960 microprocessor, also were sent to India to develop its Tejas light combat aircraft, according to the indictment.

It sates that Sudarshan and Gopal met with an Indian Embassy official in arranging the illicit purchase of 500 of the i960 microprocessors.

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