Bush 'enforcer' for Iraq

The American governor of Iraq is to be replaced within weeks by a controversial diplomat, the Evening Standard has learned.

Paul Bremer is to give up his post as leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority when sovereignty is handed over to a new Iraqi governor on 30 June - a deadline which George Bush has insisted will not be postponed.

He will be replaced as America's most senior representative in Iraq by John Negroponte, the US ambassador to the UN and one of Washington's most controversial figures. His
appointment - expected to be announced officially within days - came as the hostage crisis which is sweeping Iraq escalated, with the discovery of four mutilated bodies.

The corpses, found in a shallow grave, are almost certain to be those of four American contractors who were reported missing after an attack on a US convoy near the town of Fallujah on Friday.

The discovery is the latest episode in the worsening security situation, with a growing number of countries advising their civilians to pull out of Iraq completely.

Security is expected to deteriorate further as American forces mass around the key Shi'ite city of Najaf in preparation for a "capture or kill" attack on radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr - who has called on his followers to continue their opposition if he dies.

Fighting is also continuing between Sunni insurgents and American forces around Fallujah.

A force of 20 insurgents attacked a marine position in a residential neighbourhood, then damaged an armoured vehicle that came to support it, US spokesmen said.

A fierce battle followed to extract the vehicle as F15s overhead fired on gunmen. Early this morning, AC130 gunships fired on a row of buildings in the area from which ambushes have repeatedly been launched. Four more American casualties in the battle for Fallujah were revealed today. The marines' deaths - two on Monday and two yesterday - were "as a result of enemy action", US commanders in Baghdad said.

The deaths bring to 87 the official American death toll so far this month, with more than 560 wounded. At least 678 US troops have died since the war began.

That toll is likely to mount again today as efforts are stepped up to find two soldiers missing in the same attack which claimed the lives of the four contractors whose bodies were found near Fallujah.

Their employer, defence firm Kellog, Brown and Root, said it was sure the badly damaged bodies were those of its workers. Three more of it staff remain missing after the attack.

At least 40 foreign civilians remain missing, feared kidnapped today, presenting the Coalition Provisional Authority with a fresh crisis.

Nominating Mr Negroponte to head the authority is one of the most controversial appointments President Bush could have made. Before being approved by Congress to serve as America's representative at the UN, he faced days of grilling over allegations that at the very least he turned a blind eye to CIA-backed death squads which operated in Honduras when he was ambassador there.

The notorious "Battalion 3-16" was involved in dozens of "disappearances" as part of a dirty war on Left-wingers in Honduras, designed to support the Right-wing Contra rebels in neighbouring Nicaragua.

One critic accused Mr Negroponte of being "a gunslinger for a hyper-Reagan administration policy" of using any means to back the Contras. But Mr Negroponte has rejected the claims, telling the Senate: "To this day, I do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras."

In Baghdad he will be the key adviser to the Iraqi government, in control of the vast American aid being pumped into it, and also run the 3,000-strong embassy.