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- Cameron prime minister has promised Britain “will do what we can” to help find more than 200 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls.
- He made the comments as he held a sign bearing the “#Bring Back Our Girls” slogan on BBC’s Andrew Marr show.
- Mr Cameron also spoke of the importance of tackling extremism around the world.
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Prime Minister David Cameron has promised Britain “will do what we can” to help find more than 200 kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls.
He made the comments as he held a sign bearing the “#Bring Back Our Girls” slogan on BBC’s Andrew Marr show.
He told the BBC One programme: “I rang the Nigerian president to offer anything that would be helpful and we agreed to send out a team that includes some counter-terrorism and intelligence experts to work alongside the bigger American team that’s going out there.
“We stand ready to do anything more that the Nigerians would want.”
He said it was unlikely Nigeria would ask for British troops to help but added: “I said to President Jonathan where we can help, please ask, and we will see what we can do.”
Mr Cameron also spoke of the importance of tackling extremism around the world.
“This is not just a problem in Nigeria,” he said. “We’re seeing this really violent extreme Islamism – we see problems in Pakistan, we see problems in other parts of Africa, problems in the Middle East.
“Also, let’s be frank, here in the UK there is still too much support for extremism that we have to tackle, whether it’s in schools or colleges or universities or wherever.”
He recognised it was not an easy task to look for the girls, who were taken from their school in Chibok on 14 April.
“We can’t just pile in and do whatever we’d like,” said Mr Cameron. “It’s immensely complicated because they are probably in this deep area of jungle that is three times the size of Wales.
“But it’s good that efforts are being stepped up and we’ll do what we can.”
The Foreign Office has said there are “large information gaps” because of the scale and nature of the incident.
“The priority for the team in the first instance is establishing the facts such as the precise identities of those taken and what has actually happened to help Nigeria build a better picture,” a spokesman said.
Mr Cameron is the latest high-profile supporter of the social media campaign after US First Lady Michelle Obama was pictured with a similar poster.
