Mr Cameron, who faces a crucial vote in parliament later Wednesday about whether to authorize airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, was taking a “very important step”, Mr Kerry said.
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Kerry said a political transition would be a boon for everyone, allowing the Islamic State to be “eliminated within a matter of months”.
Kerry was speaking hours after Britain launched bombing raids against Islamic State targets in Syria, joining forces with France and the United States almost three weeks after the jihadist group killed 130 people in attacks across Paris.
In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that NATO’s expansion would be met with retaliatory measures from Russia, Reuters reported, and Russia was also reportedly planning to halt joint projects with Montenegro. Washington is however due to send 50 U.S. special forces into Syria soon.
“We’re not going to do an Iraq-style invasion of Iraq or Syria with battalions that are moving across the desert”, he said in an interview that aired Thursday on CBS Morning News. “Asked later if he meant Western ground forces, Kerry said: “(I’m) talking about Syrian and Arab, as we have been consistently”.
The dispute over how to proceed was complicated last month when North Atlantic Treaty Organization member Turkey shot down a Russian warplane.
Underscoring the difficulty of restoring previously warm ties, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of buying oil from the Islamic State group on Thursday.
He added that Russian Federation and Iran continue to have a different view on Assad.
“The negotiating situation should be between the Syrian delegation and patriotic opposition which rejects violence and extremism”, Lavrov said in Belgrade.
Although he didn’t reference the Canadian combat withdrawal, Kerry did give the Liberal government an opening by saying that there are a number of countries willing to step up and the contributions don’t necessarily “have to be troops engaged in kinetic action”.
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The invitation to Montenegro, a small Balkan nation once part of Yugoslavia, to join North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was “another step toward the full integration of Europe and toward the common defense”, Mr Kerry said.
