No need to ‘rush’ SAS inquiry: PM

Comments by former defence minister Wayne Mapp, accepting civilians were killed in an SAS raid on villages in Afghanistan in 2010, have not persuaded Bill English to launch an inquiry.

The Prime Minister yesterday said the Government was ‘‘still not going to rush into an inquiry’’.

He said Mapp did not have any new or different information than was available to the Government or the Defence Force, and his view on civilian deaths was based on claims in a 2014 documentary on Maori TV that were repeated in the book Hit and Run, by authors Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson.

‘‘The existence of allegations is not a reason on such a serious matter. The allegations need some degree of being substantiated there needs to be some substance to them,’’ English said.

The Defence Force evidence so far was that New Zealand troops acted consistently with their rules of engagement.

He said he would be very surprised if the military had misled the Government, and that was not his expectation.

He would be meeting the Minister of Defence and Chief of Defence when they returned from a trip to Iraq in a day or two.

Meanwhile Mapp has not denied calling the operation ’’disastrous’’ and a ‘‘fiasco’’.

Labour and the Greens have joined NZ First in calls for a full inquiry into the operation.