London: Britain should not join air strikes on Syria until there is a clear strategy to defeat the Islamic State group and bring peace to the country, an influential committee of MPs said today.
Prime Minister David Cameron's government wants to extend Britain's current involvement in US-led air strikes on targets in Iraq into Syria if it can get support from across the political spectrum in a House of Commons vote.
However, the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said in a new report that Cameron's focus on joining air strikes was "incoherent" and "a distraction".
"We are concerned that the Government is focusing on extending airstrikes to Syria...without any expectation that its action will be militarily decisive, and without a coherent and long-term plan for defeating ISIL [IS] and ending the civil war," said committee chairman Crispin Blunt, a senior MP for Cameron's Conservatives.
"There is now a miscellany of uncoordinated military engagements by an alarming range of international actors in Iraq and Syria... These forces desperately need coordinating into a coherent strategy and that is where our efforts should be focused."
