The body of the sole remaining Briton of five kidnapped in Baghdad in May 2007 by Shiite militants will be handed over in the coming days, Iraq said on Sunday.

The transfer of Alan McMenemy's corpse will bring an end to a two-and-a-half year ordeal that has seen several hundred suspected insurgents, including the leader of the group behind the kidnappings, released in an apparent deal.

"We expect them to deliver the body within the next few days in order to close the file," Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP, referring to the British bodyguard.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman in London told AFP: "Our position is unchanged. We have believed for some time that Alan's been killed and his immediate family have been told our views.

"We continue to urge those holding Alan to return his body immediately," she said. "We're in close contact with the Iraqi authorities and we're doing everything we can to try and secure a swift return to the UK."

McMenemy, 34, was one of four security guards for Peter Moore, 36, a computer consultant who was released unharmed on Wednesday by the League of the Righteous, a breakaway Shiite militia, 31 months after the kidnapping.

All four of his bodyguards, also Britons, have since been killed.

The bodies of three — Alec MacLachlan, 30, Jason Swindlehurst, 38, and Jason Creswell, 39 — were handed over to British officials last year.

Some commentators said a deal may have been done to free Moore after League of the Righteous leader Qais al-Khazaali was recently transferred from US to Iraqi custody.

The Foreign Office denied any deal was done, saying the United States transferred Khazaali into Iraqi custody under the terms of a bilateral agreement.

Khazaali's brother Laith was released in June, around the same time two of the bodies were handed over to Britain, while around 200 detainees were freed in September, when a third body was transferred.

Qais al-Khazaali, meanwhile, was among detainees handed over to the Iraqi government last month.

Moore returned to Britain on Friday, and said in a statement released by the Foreign Office he was "delighted to have returned to the UK and to have been reunited with my family."

"I am looking forward to spending the coming days and weeks catching up on all the things I've missed over the past two and a half years," he added.

"I would therefore be grateful if we could be given the space and time we need to start to get to know one another again."

The five were kidnapped from the finance ministry in Baghdad in May 2007, by some 40 League of the Righteous gunmen.

US regional military commander General David Petraeus said on Friday that Moore spent at least part of his time in captivity in Iran, citing American intelligence.

"Our intelligence assessment is that he (Moore) certainly has spent part of the time, at the very least, in Iran, part of the time that he was a hostage," he told reporters in Baghdad while on a visit to the Iraqi capital.

"That is based on an intelligence assessment, and obviously I've not had a chance to hear it, certainly not to talk to him, but nor to hear anything that he has said."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, however, there was no "direct evidence" Moore was held inside Iran.

British newspaper The Guardian has reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps led the kidnap operation and took the five to Iran within a day of their abduction.

"I've talked to Peter and we didn't talk about that," Brown told BBC television. "We don't have direct evidence from the Foreign Office of that. If evidence becomes available, obviously we'll share it with the people.

"What happened to Peter, and the trouble that he had over two years and more, are something that are a great problem for us, because of the others who didn't survive, and the other one who we still don't have information about."

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