US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris yesterday to rubber-stamp a coalition hurriedly assembled to face Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria.

The summit of international foreign ministers pledged to help Iraq fight Isis “by all means necessary.”

A joint statement by the 30 countries involved said support would include “appropriate military assistance,” although there were evident doubts and barely suppressed disagreements as to what constituted “appropriateness.”

Eager ally France had leapt at the opportunity to host the conference.

French President Francois Hollande announced there was “no time to lose” as he addressed interested states’ foreign ministers — minus the two countries who share most of Iraq’s borders.

The US has so far been alone in carrying out air strikes. But French reconnaissance jets made their first sorties yesterday and the US claimed several Arab countries had offered to conduct air strikes.

Western officials have made it clear they consider Syrian President Bashar Assad part of the problem and the US opposed France’s attempt to invite Iran.

The conference was thin on strategy which included stopping foreign fighters joining Isis, cutting its funding streams and trying to counter its ideology.

Quite how these objectives could be reached was not explored.

Nor did the hurriedly convened conference manage much of a coherent approach.

Ahead of the conference, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius acknowledged a number of the countries at the table had “very probably” financed Isis’s advance.

And Iraq’s President Fouad Massoum appeared ambivalent about Arab participation, saying his country needed the support of its neighbours — but not necessarily their jets or soldiers.

Mr Massoum had previously expressed regret that Iran was not attending and seemed lukewarm to the possible participation of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in air strikes.

“It is not necessary that they participate in air strikes.

“What is important is that they participate in the decisions of this conference,” he said.

But what appeared most important, to the US at least, was that the conference gave substance to an alliance that kept the issue well clear of the United Nations security council, which it cannot control.