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The White House has announced a series of personnel changes in US President George W. Bush's foreign policy team and the US military leadership in Iraq, which analysts said were designed to pave way for the new policy on Iraq that Bush is expected to unveil next week.

In a statement on Friday, Bush said he accepted the recommendations of Defense Secretary Robert Gates that David Petraeus replace George Casey as the top US commander in Iraq, and William J. Fallon, currently the Commander of US Pacific Command, succeed John Abizaid as commander of the US Central Command which oversees American military affairs in the Middle East.

Bush also nominated John Negroponte, currently director of National Intelligence, to serve as deputy state secretary, and J. Michael McConnell, a former director of the National Security Agency, to succeed Negroponte as the country's top intelligence official.

Of these and other changes, the ones involving changing the military leadership in Iraq has caught the most attention, as they are directly linked to Bush's proposed new Iraq plan and its implementation.

Since Democrats defeated their Republican counterparts in last November's Congressional elections and retook control of both chambers of Congress, the Bush administration has been under increasing pressure to change course in Iraq.

After two months' review, the administration's new Iraq policy has already taken shape, and Bush is expected to announce the new strategy as early as next Wednesday.

US media reports said Bush's new strategy is expected to include new political, military, economic and diplomatic steps to win the war, and the military approach could include a short-term increase of US forces to Iraq, to help quell the sectarian violence in the country, particularly in its capital of Baghdad.

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned one day after Republicans' defeat in the Nov. 7 elections, was a key architect of the Bush administration's now unpopular war policy, and his ouster was believed to be a first step by Bush to revamp his strategy on Iraq.

The replacements of both Abizaid and Casey were almost certain after Bush began to review his Iraq war policy and Rumsfeld resigned after the elections, as both the two generals were installed to their current positions under Rumsfeld's leadership at the Pentagon and both were said to have reservations about Bush's proposed increase of troops in Iraq.

Personnel changes in the US military leadership in Iraq, and other changes, would help Bush to demonstrate to the American people that he was taking a new approach in Iraq by enlisting a new team to implement his new policy, analysts said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2007)