Clinton to launch tech trade plan on India visit

"What we are proposing is that the US and India work together…in pioneering the concepts, the new legal framework, to look at the implications, to make recommendations," Clark said.

Clinton starts a week-long visit to South Asia on Sunday night. He will spend a day in Bangladesh, five days in India and make a brief stopover in Pakistan on his way back to the United States.

Clark said a protocol on the initiative would be finalised soon, and would be announced at Hyderabad in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh or at Bombay, the financial capital. Clinton is scheduled to visit the two cities on March 24.

Clark said the joint initiative would "talk about how we structure an international consensus for more liberal trade in knowledge products and services".

Economists say the Internet will fundamentally change therules of corporations and international trade, which would have to be redrawn to facilitate E-commerce and the flow of knowledge.

The India-U.S. Talks would focus on the laws and taxpolicies to be put in place to encourage this process, Clark said.

The Knowledge Trade Inititiative, Clark added, would makeits conclusions and recommendations within 12 months of its start.

Rules to govern E-commerce could not be finalised at theministerial round of World Trade Organisation talks in Seattle last year after the conference failed to reach a consensus on a new global trade agreement.

India, which wants to take advantage of its mushroomingsoftware talent in a global situation of short supply, has said in the past that it is willing to adopt a liberal policy on taxing E-commerce transactions.