As the US continues to nudge it to conclude the civil nuclear deal at the earliest, India, on Thursday, said it is aware of the time-table but negotiations take their own time.

“We are not looking at a deadline. We know the time-table, we know what to do,” Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said here.

Speaking after his meeting with US Under Secretary of Commerce Mario Mancuso on hi-tech exports, Menon said the government was trying and “hoping” to wrap up the agreement with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as soon as possible.

“But these are negotiations... They take two hands to clap,” he said. The comments came a day after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the “clock is ticking” and India needed to conclude talks with IAEA and seek exemptions from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) at the earliest.

He made the deadline clear as he had said,l “With this being an election year, there is an open question about how long the Senate will be in session beyond this summer and September.”