Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday urged the British parliament to back a motion in favour of military intervention in Syria.
He spoke as he opened a debate for which the parliament was specially recalled.
“Parliamentarians had been called to debate a response to one of the most abhorrent uses of chemical weapons in a century,’’ he said, dismissing comparison with the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“It is not about taking sides, not about invading, it is not about regime change, or even working more closely with the opposition.
“It is about the large scale use of chemical weapons and our response to a war crime, nothing else’’, he said.
Cameron said he was seeking the greatest possible consensus with the opposition and the country.
The British opposition Labour Party will vote against a government motion in favour of military intervention in Syria, a party source says.
“We have been having increasing doubts about the opaque nature of the government’s motion’’, the source tells the Press Association news agency.
Labour wanted “compelling evidence’’ that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was responsible for last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack, but there was no mention of such evidence, the source says. (dpa/NAN)
