David Cameron to outline case for airstrikes in Syria

France’s president has said his country will step up its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, launching a week of diplomacy with a meeting with the British prime minister in Paris.

In a speech to parliament on Monday, the British Prime Minister said: “As the murders on the streets of Paris reminded us so starkly, Isil (IS) is not some remote threat”.

“There’s scepticism on both sides of the Houses but I think opinions are beginning to change”, he said.

The group is also being targeted from the air by a U.S.-led coalition and Russian Federation.

Cameron on Monday only said that the vote could come “in the coming days and weeks”.

“Obviously if we do more in Syria we will… obviously need to increase the capabilities we have”, he said.

The Paris attacks that killed 130 people have sparked sweeping searches, a maximum-level alert in Brussels and an intensified military operation against the Islamic State group that has claimed responsibility for France’s worst terror strike.

“I can tell the House today that we have put in place a significant new contingency plan to deal with major terrorist attacks”, he said.

The full answer to the threat from IS would not be delivered until there is a new Syrian government which is genuinely representative of all the country’s people, he said. Despite now seeking to bomb a different party to Syria’s civil war, Cameron has since shied away from promising another parliamenty vote until he could be certain of winning.

And he said that while ground forces would be needed as well, they would not be British.

Article 51: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of collective or individual self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain global peace and security. The US-led coalition has been pounding IS targets in Syria for over a year, but France joined the campaign only in September and has concentrated its air strikes on the jihadists’ Syrian stronghold, Raqqa.

Mr Cameron has set out his case for extending military action from Iraq into Syria in a 33-page document to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which, in a report last month, warned against airstrikes.

Mr Cameron said seven attacks over the past year had been linked to IS or inspired by its propaganda.

“If we won’t act now, when our friend and ally France has been struck in this way, then our friends and allies can be forgiven for asking: If not now, when?”

Thirty Conservative lawmakers voted against the motion for military intervention in Syria in August 2013.

Hollande met with British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier Monday and they agreed to a pan-European effort for stronger external European Union border controls, a more effective way of screening people and greater information sharing, Cameron said.