PM David Cameron heated clashes with senior MPs in secrecy row over British military operations in Syria 

#London : #UK PM Mr #David Cameron has been involved in heated clashes with senior MPs in a secrecy row over British military operations in Syria.

Appearing before a powerful committee of MPs at Westminster, the Prime Minister rejected calls to provide more information about drone strikes and the work of the intelligence services.

At times Mr David Cameron appeared tetchy and rattled as the committee’s chairman, senior Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, repeatedly urged him to make more information available to the public and MPs.

During their clash, at one point a clearly annoyed Mr David Cameron snapped at Mr Tyrie: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The bad-tempered exchanges came as the PM appeared at one of his regular grillings by the Liaison Committee of MPs, made up of the chairs of the all-party Commons select committees.

Video: PM: 70,000 Is The Best Estimate
Mr Cameron’s first clash came with the Tory chairman of the Defence Select Committee, Julian Lewis, over the PM’s claim last month that there were 70,000 “non-extremist” opposition fighters in Syria.

Refusing to give details of the groups concerned, Mr Cameron said: “It would be effectively giving President Assad a list of the groups and the people and potentially the areas he should be targeting.”

He did admit, however, that some were “relatively hardline Islamists” and said: “They are not all the sort of people you would bump into at a Liberal Democrat party conference.”

Mr David Cameron was then challenged by Harriet Harman, the former interim Labour leader who now chairs Parliament’s Joint Human Rights Committee, to publish Government policy on the use of drones for targeted killings.

He said he was unlikely to allow all the information to be published surrounding the events that led to the drone strike that killed 21-year-old Reyaad Khan, from Cardiff, and Ruhul Amin, from Aberdeen, currently being investigated by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).