Nuclear  energy is key to India's economic future, the country's prime minister said Friday — remarks clearly aimed at defending a historic atomic energy deal with the United States from critics at home.

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh never directly mentioned the deal, his comments were a reiteration of a familiar argument that both he and U.S. President George W. Bush have used to promote the pact since it was first announced in July 2005.

Singh's defense of the deal came a day after the government agreed to create a committee to examine the deal before it is implemented, a move some fear could lead to delays that would ultimately scuttle the pact.

The committee had been a chief demand of the prime minister's communist political allies, who are leading the opposition to the pact, which they say could undermine India's nuclear weapons program and independent foreign policy.

The deal allows the United States to send nuclear fuel and technology to booming, but energy-starved India, which has been cut off from international atomic markets for the past three decades by its refusal to sign nonproliferation accords and its testing of nuclear weapons.