Republicans Richard Shelby and Tim Hutchinson are arriving in the capital from Pakistan with their wives on a work-cum-pleasure trip, which will take them besides New Delhi, to Srinagar, Jaipur, Agra, Udaipur, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Varanasi.

A side-trip to the Pokharan test site could not be confirmed. But both Senators are also planning to squeeze in Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu.

Shelby is the chairman of the US House committee on Intelligence, and in that capacity was the pointperson who investigated the CIA failure to anticipate India's nuclear tests on May 11 and 13.

In fact, he was the first US Senator to point the finger homewards, rather than on the ``duplicity'' that US officials had begun charging with in the conduct of these tests.

Not surprisingly, the government is planning to give both Senators ``the fulltreatment of their appreciation.'' Shelby and Hutchinson thus have meetings lined up with no less than President K R Narayanan, Prime Minister Vajpayee, India's pointman with Washington Jaswant Singh, Home Minister L K Advani and MOS in the Ministry of External Affairs Vasundhara Raje.