New Delhi, Sept. 4: External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee is expected to rebut the Left-BJP’s accusation of a “sellout” to the US on the nuclear deal after the “secret” letter from the Bush administration to the US Congress was leaked.

Mukherjee has been fielded to launch the counter-offensive on behalf of the government and the Congress. .

The Congress and the government have decided to de-link the communiqué controversy from the outcome of the make-or-break Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting in Vienna, and will have separate strategies for each.

“One will essentially answer the Opposition’s charges and try and allay our allies’ fears. But if the NSG talks end inconclusively, we will whip out the nationalist card and say a good deal done in the nation’s interest couldn’t be carried through,” a source said.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said: “We will go to the people and say, ‘give us a second term and we will get the deal through’.”

The broad contours of the rebuttal package are:

• The deal involved a tightrope walk from the start on almost every aspect, including the right to test. “We negotiated a treaty that gives India the unfettered right to test when we want and the US the unfettered right to react,” an official said.

• An NSG waiver would ensure that other “friendly” countries could recompense the shortfall if the US terminated its part of the agreement in the event of India testing again

• The US might not take a “black-and-white” view if circumstances forced India to test. “If China tests and we do similarly, the US will understand. Washington will read the riot act only if we test without provocation.”

• Remind the BJP how its government was ready to declare a unilateral moratorium on testing after the 1998 Pokhran explosion and to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty if others did.