Prime Minister Tony Blair convenes top cabinet ministers yesterday with a US request for British troops to be sent to more dangerous areas in Iraq sure to top the agenda and a positive response likely. Ministers will meet for a regular weekly session from 0830 GMT and could agree on an announcement to parliament the same day, although some political sources say it will take longer than that.

Officials insisted late on Wednesday no decision had yet been made, but senior government members have signalled they will not refuse the US request unless British military chiefs say they cannot summon up the required forces. Blair’s spokesman would not be drawn on the issue. “The decision will be taken at the appropriate time in the appropriate way,” he said, refusing to get into possible timetables.

A reconnaissance team has studied the prospects for British troops moving north from their relatively calm southern Basra base. Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said on Monday he expected a report back from army chiefs this week. Hoon said there would be no penalty for refusing but that it would mean failing an ally, while Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Britain was very sympathetic to the US request.

The United States has asked Britain to have its troops patrol volatile areas near Baghdad in order to free up US forces to tackle insurgents in hotspots like Falluja. Until now, the British have been concentrated in Basra. Since the Iraq war began, 68 British troops have been killed, compared with well over 1,000 Americans.

Blair has confirmed that if the deployment took place, it would involve the army’s Black Watch regiment but pledged that they would be home by Christmas — suggesting any assault on the rebel-held town of Falluja cannot be far away.

Some reports said Britain’s decision to move soldiers north from Basra had already been taken; others that Blair would delay any troop shift until after US presidential elections on November 2 to calm domestic disquiet. Some politicians accuse Blair of having already agreed to the request to help President George W. Bush ahead of those US elections, in which Iraq has proved a pivotal factor.

Officials insist the US electoral timetable has nothing to do with the request and that it is planned Iraqi elections in January which are driving efforts to quell insurgent groups. In an interview with the Times newspaper, British Lieutenant-General John McColl, the outgoing second in command of the US-led multinational force in Iraq, said troop movements had been considered in the run-up to the January vote.

“There may be a request to surge additional forces into Iraq in the run-up to the elections – that has been discussed. But it is no more than prudent planning at this stage.” Blair said on Wednesday that a further upsurge of rebel violence was likely as the Iraqi election neared: “This has nothing to do with American elections, it has everything, however, to do with the Iraqi elections in January.”

BAGHDAD

<B>Gunmen attack bus and kill four</B>

■ Gunmen fired on a bus carrying Baghdad airport employees to work yesterday, killing four people and wounding 11 in a brazen assault on Iraqis helping to revive a vital link in Iraq’s reconstruction. The attackers strafed the bus with gunfire as it was passing through a Baghdad neighbourhood shortly after 7 a.m. (0400 GMT), carrying about 25 people to work at Baghdad International Airport, on the western outskirts of the capital.

“The bus was riddled with bullet holes. There was broken glass everywhere,” said an airport employee who asked not to be named. She said most of the passengers were office workers. Staff at Yarmouk hospital in central Baghdad said they had received 11 wounded, some of them in critical condition. Insurgents have previously attacked buses taking people to work at US-run bases, but yesterday’s assault appeared to target people only very loosely associated with the Americans.

Baghdad’s airport, formerly a huge military base, now has next to no US presence and is protected by an independent British contractor. Thousands of Iraqis work there, mostly for the relaunched Iraqi Airways or for cargo companies. In the past, guerrillas have specifically targeted translators, engineers and cleaning staff working for the U.S. military on US-protected bases.

At a US camp near the airport, a military judge was expected to deliver a verdict and possibly pass sentence on Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, who has pleaded guilty to five charges of sexual and physical abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib jail last October and November. On Wednesday, Frederick, 38, the most senior enlisted man so far implicated in the scandal, admitted forcing at least three prisoners to masturbate and at one point hitting a detainee so hard in the chest that he needed to be resuscitated.

<B>Mike Peacock</B>