While India muddles through to try and put together yet another coalition or minority government, US officials are wringing their hands at the changeover in New Delhi which may choke, if not unhinge, the recent modest progress made between the two sides in several rounds of intense and sustained dialogue.

Officially though, the administration maintained a open position declaring that the events in New Delhi was a vivid demonstration of India's democracy at work and that it looked forward to working closely with whatever new government is formed.

But officials conceded privately that there is a lot of headscratching going on about what could emerge out of the heat and dust in New Delhi. Despitethe delicate position of the BJP-led government, the Clinton administration, like many observers, was rather unprepared for its sudden demise by a single vote.

The consensus was the BJP would survive, although no one was going to mortgage his house on that, one official said.

The immediate concern here is what the changeover will do to the Indo-US dialogue paced by Deputy Secretary Strobe Talbott and the outgoing External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh.

Again, while publicly affirming that the administration was looking forward to resuming the dialogue with any new Indian interlocutors, officials privately concede that it would take a while to reconstruct the kind of rapport Talbott and Singh had struck.

It is a bummer, but that is the hazards of diplomacy. There is a recognition here that this is a much bigger thing than the Indian or the American government. We are working on an understanding between India and America, and in that sense, these developments may be a useful element, a state departmentofficial said.

What officials here are worried about is how a new dispensation in New Delhi would react at the resumption of the Indo-US dialogue given that the Talbott-Singh talks were conducted in extreme secrecy and the then Opposition was left out of the loop. But administration officials familiar with the inside story say secrecy was imperative for both sides because of the sensitive nature of the dialogue which may have involved concessions that would have rankled the hawks both in New Delhi and Washington. US officials are also cognisant of the fairly hard-line position the Congress has taken on the non-proliferation issue.

One official groaned when speaking about the prospect of dealing with Natwar Singh, who has been a sort of shadow foreign minister and advisor to Sonia Gandhi on foreign policy issues.

Progress of the dialogue aside, the uncertainty in New Delhi virtually spells finis to any chance of President Clinton visiting the sub-continent this year. The US itself is beginning to getinto the campaign mode - although the Presidential elections are a good 16 months away - and with New Delhi too joining the party, Clinton's hopes of signing off with a trip to the region seems to have come a-cropper.