KEY POINTS:
In a new shake-up of the Bush national security team, John Negroponte is to step down as America's first national director of intelligence, to become deputy secretary of state under Condoleezza Rice.
The move, which is technically if anything a demotion, has caused some bafflement in Washington, not least because only last month Negroponte said he expected to remain in his post until the end of the current Administration in 2009.
The change is likely to have major ramifications for policy on Iraq, where Negroponte was United States ambassador between 2004 and 2005. Word of the switch came as George W. Bush finalised a new strategy on Iraq, expected to include a "surge" of 20,000 or more troops to the region, in a bid to restore order in Baghdad.
It also fills a top State Department post that has remained embarrassingly vacant since July, when Robert Zoellick resigned to take a job on Wall Street. In another job shift, Zalmay Khalilzad, the current US envoy in Baghdad could soon be named ambassador to the United Nations.
- INDEPENDENT
