LONDON
The U.K. Parliament is to be recalled on Friday to debate whether the U.K. should join United States-led air strikes against ISIL militants in Iraq, Downing Street has announced.
The announcement on Wednesday came a day after the US - along with Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates - carried out strikes against ISIL targets in Syria.
Government officials said in a statement: "The Speaker has agreed to the Prime Minister’s request to recall Parliament this Friday to debate the UK’s response to the request from the Iraqi government for air strikes to support operations against ISIL in Iraq."
"The Prime Minister has called a meeting of the Cabinet tomorrow," it added.
Government coalition partners the Liberal Democrats have said they are willing to back air strikes in Iraq and Labour have said that they are "open to the possibility".
Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and deputy prime minister, told the BBC that his party would back air strikes in Iraq as they were "legal" and the UK would be "part of a much bigger coalition ... crucially including a number of Arab countries, which deprives ISIL of the ability to somehow portray it as a west-verses-the-rest crusade".
Military action debate
There is believed to be support among lawmakers for military action in Iraq, but not Syria, and there is doubt whether there would be enough support to secure a vote for military action in Syria.
The U.K. is supplying arms to Iraqi Kurds and conducting aerial surveillance operations, but has so far not joined airstrikes against ISIL, either in Syria or Iraq.
Last year, Cameron lost a vote in parliament to attack the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Cameron is currently at the United Nations in New York where he met Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani - the first meeting between a British premier and Iran’s president since Iran's 1979 revolution.
According to a Downing Street official, the pair are scheduled to discuss the ongoing situation in Iraq and Syria and Iran’s potential role in helping to tackle ISIL.
ISIL continues to control large swathes of land in Syria and Iraq and has posted videos apparently showing the execution of hostages, including that of two American journalists and a British aid worker.
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