Kabul, Afghanistan ? With his top security officials charged with murdering a Cabinet minister and his capital’s international peacekeeping force under fire, interim Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai promised Sunday to take “every measure to guarantee security in this battered nation.”

Karzai dismissed the killing of his aviation 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 he might consider requesting a bigger peacekeeping force.

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 said five suspects had been arrested here and two more in Saudi Arabia.

“There’s no way we will let Afghanistan go back to the ways of the past,” he said. “These gunrunners, these guys who think they can get away with looting and murder those days are over.”