Giving a fillip to bilateral nuclear ties, India and the United States have agreed to expand their cooperation on safety issues by including two major aspects of licence renewal and risk-informed regulation in its ambit.

"We have agreed to renew the [nuclear] relationship with India... and have resumed dialogue," Richard A Meserve, Chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in New Delhi on Thursday.

Meserve, who is on a six-day trip to India and has held talks with top officials of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, the Atomic Energy Commission and visited the Tarapore reactor facilities, said his "very productive" interactions have "laid a foundation for a strong programme of nuclear safety".

The two sides are already cooperating on fire safety, symptom-based emergency procedures and plant design modifications.

The US had stopped cooperating in these areas following India's nuclear tests in 1998. President George W Bush and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had decided in November 2001 to resume nuclear safety cooperation.