UK PM mulling Syria air strikes
David Cameron has given his broadest hint yet that he wants to extend the fight against Islamic State (ISIS) to Syria and that only a lack of political consent at Westminster is holding the government back.
The prime minister said on Sunday he was sympathetic to the argument mounted by former chief of the defence staff Sir David Richards, that Isis had to be defeated in Syria as well as Iraq.
The former army general had told the Sunday Times: “You cannot possibly defeat ISIS by only tackling them in Iraq. How the hell do you win the war when most of your enemy end up in a country you cannot get involved in?”
Cameron said on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: “I have a lot of sympathy with that view, which is why I have said we support what the Americans and the five Arab nations have done in Syria. We have a Syria strategy which is to build up the Free Syrian Army [and] the Syrian National Coalition to achieve a political transition in Syria. But I wanted to take the House of Commons proposals that I could achieve consensus with to make sure Britain was playing its role in this coordinated action across both parties.”
Cameron said he agreed that boots on the ground were needed but insisted they must not be British ones. “We are not trying to defeat Isil [ISIS] from the air alone. We believe you do need troops on the ground but they should be Iraqi troops, they should be Kurdish troops. We are part of a large international coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy this organisation.”
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