With his top security officials charged with murdering a Cabinet minister and his capital’s international peacekeeping force under fire, interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai promised Sunday to take “every measure to guarantee security in this battered nation.”
Addressing the international news media after three stressful days, Karzai dismissed the killing of a minister Thursday as a personal vendetta with no political overtones.
Responding to reports of gunshots fired at British peacekeepers Saturday and a wild melee Friday involving peacekeepers and soccer fans, he said a bigger and more robust peacekeeping force might be requested.
The assassination of Air Transportation and Tourism Minister Abdul Rahman at the Kabul airport fanned fears of a return to the brutal and corrupt Afghan governments of the early 1990s.
Karzai offered few new details of how four senior security officials and the airport’s two security chiefs allegedly were able to kill Rahman and toss his body from an airplane while more than 1,000 people milled about on the tarmac. Three of the suspects then boarded a chartered plane carrying Muslim pilgrims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
The pilgrims initially were accused of beating Rahman to death because of flight delays.
Saying five suspects had been arrested in Afghanistan and two more in Saudi Arabia, Karzai sought to reduce concerns that a rogue faction of Northern Alliance officials threatens his government.
“There’s no way we will let Afghanistan go back to the ways of the past,” said the interim prime minister, who came to power on Dec. 20. “These gunrunners, these guys who think they can get away with looting and murder — those days are over.”
Karzai will be getting some new help from the United States this week.
On Monday a two-star U.S. general arrives in Kabul to make good on President Bush’s pledge to win the peace by helping to build a national army and end decades of rule by warlords.
Bush vowed “a lasting partnership” in aiding the war-torn country when Karzai visited the White House on Jan. 28.
Maj. Gen. Charles Campbell said his assessment team will spend substantial time in Afghanistan before presenting recommendations to Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the Central Command, which directed the war in Afghanistan. The delegation is drawn from the Pentagon and State Department, and includes a representative of Britain.
Campbell plans talks with Karzai as well as the ministers of defense and interior and the army chief of staff. They will discuss the training of troops and establishing an officer corps with allegiance to the central government.
In another development, U.S. military jets bombed a former Al Qaeda training camp Sunday near the Pakistan border, residents of the area said by telephone.
Four jets dropped six bombs about dawn in Paktia province south of Kabul, said resident Munir Hussein Tori, adding the camp was thought deserted.
The area is about 9 miles from the village of Zawar, where U.S. commandos have been seeking Al Qaeda and Taliban renegades. The bombing would be the first by U.S. warplanes since an air strike at an Al Qaeda camp in Zawar on Jan. 14.
