india

Updated: Jan 19, 2019 23:23 IST

India and Denmark have politically resolved the issue of extraditing Niels Holck alias Kim Davy, the prime accused in the 1995 Purulia arms drop, and now plan to elevate their relations to a strategic partnership, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said on Saturday.

The Danish judiciary’s decision in 2011 to bar Davy’s extradition on the ground that he could be exposed to inhuman treatment in an Indian jail sent ties into a tailspin for more than five years. Davy was accused of playing a key role in the dropping of a large cache of arms from an An-26 aircraft in Purulia district of West Bengal in December 1995.

Rasmussen also said India should do more on the global stage to ensure a level playing field and a rules-based order, against the backdrop of China taking on a larger role as the US ceded its leadership position in international affairs.

Rasmussen said he and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi had agreed that “we should bring our relations to a higher level, tasking our staff to prepare a truly strategic partnership”. Denmark, he added, currently has such a partnership with China and South Korea.

Though “there are still questions to be solved” regarding the issue of Davy, Rasmussen said he and Modi had concurred during a meeting in April last year that “independent authorities” in both countries could address the matter. The unresolved issues will be handled on a “judicial track”, he said. “So I regard this problem as solved in the political sense, so to speak,” said Rasmussen, who met Modi on the sidelines of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in Gandhinagar on Friday. “There is a dialogue between our authorities,” he said.

Rasmussen noted Davy hadn’t figured in his latest meeting with Modi, saying this was “a true signal that we have overcome that, and agreed that this is a separate question”.

While welcoming China’s desire to play a “bigger role” on the global stage at a time when US President Donald Trump is “turning his back to the rest of the world”, Rasmussen said Modi and the Indian leadership should “also turn their face towards the world”. “It’s not only about India first, it’s also about the Indian contribution to the rest of the world, and the way he (Modi) engages in this SDGs and sustainable development agenda is something that I want to welcome very much,” he added.