Australia in no hurry to take part in Syria air strike against ISIS

Australia will not rush to decide if it should be involved in air strikes in Syria against Islamic State militants. The United States has made a formal appeal to Australia to play an extended part in the coalition forces attack in Syria.

According to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Australia will take at least a couple of weeks to respond to the “serious request.” He said it would be a global disaster if northern Iraq and eastern Syria became a consolidated terrorist state.

"It would be a disaster for Australia because what we have been seeing on an almost daily basis is the continued lure that this terrorist group, that this incipient terrorist state, is providing to misguided and impressionable young Australians," AAP quoted Abbott who spoke to reporters in Perth on Friday.

According to the Australian prime minister, ISIS is “almost incalculable unfathomable evil.” He said it was important for Australia to be a part of the fight for eliminating the “death cult.” He, however, mentioned that there was a legal difference between launching airstrikes in Iraq and doing so in Syria. However, he wonders why the coalition should respect the border if the militant organisation does not.

A top Syrian official told Rudaw, a news agency in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, that both the Kurdish People’s Protection Units and Syrian government troops had successfully been able to push back ISIS militants from the Syrian town of Hasaka.

Syrian Minister for National Reconciliation Ali Haidar said the cooperation from the Kurdish units had been instrumental in defeating ISIS extremists in a number of areas like Hasaka. Haidar is the head of a Syrian parliament committee which wants to the cooperation of different groups in the country in its fight against terror.

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