Britain not ruled out air strikes against Islamic State in Syria - PM's spokesman

BERLIN/LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron has not ruled out military action against Islamic State militants in Syria, his spokesman said on Thursday after Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Britain would not take part in any air strikes there. On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama said he had authorised U.S. air strikes for the first time in Syria and more attacks in Iraq in a broad escalation of a campaign against the militant group. "In terms of air power, the prime minister has not ruled anything out and that is the position," Cameron's spokesman said. After a meeting in Berlin earlier on Thursday, Hammond and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a news conference they would not be taking part in air strikes in Syria against Islamic State. Hammond said Britain "supports entirely the U.S. approach of developing an international coalition" against the Islamic State, whom he described as "barbaric", and said that in terms of how to help such a coalition "we have ruled nothing out". But, asked about Obama's proposal for air strikes against Islamic State in Syria, Hammond replied: "Let me be clear: Britain will not be taking part in any air strikes in Syria. We have already had that discussion in our parliament last year and we won't be revisiting that position." Hammond said the legal environment and "military permissiveness" in Syria and Iraq were very different. But Cameron's spokesman later said Hammond had been referring to the fact that parliament had last year decided against taking military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's administration. When it came to tackling Islamic State, the government had not yet made a decision about joining military strikes, he said, when asked about Hammond's comments. "What we are dealing with here is ... a group which you see across both Syria and Iraq and which needs to be tackled in both of those areas." Steinmeier said Germany had not been asked to take part in the air strikes and would not be participating. "To quite clear, we have not been asked to do so and neither will we do so," he said. (Reporting by Stephen Brown in Berlin and Kylie MacLellan in London; Editing by Alison Williams)