President George W. Bush has chosen army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute to take up the new position of war "czar" to oversee the conflicts in Iraq and Afganistan, a US official said Tuesday. "Lieutenant General Douglas Lute will be the assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan policy," the senior administration official said.

Meanwhile, the White House warned Tuesday that US troops could get stuck in Iraq with no funds to pay their ticket home if Congress refuses to yield in a standoff over an emergency war budget. "If the stalemate continues for months, the funds are cut off. You've got a military that's cut off, period," said White House spokesman Tony Snow, adding such an eventuality would even hamper a US withdrawal from Iraq.

"You don't have the money to send them home. That also costs money. It's not as if everybody just has, you know, frequent flier passes, say, 'Hey, war's over, send me back for free.' That also costs money."

He offered assurances that such a surreal situation would never happen, maintaining a solution to the stalemate would be found, but he sought to highlight the urgency of the situation.

"Tomorrow's (Wednesday) going to mark the 100th day since the president asked Congress to provide funding for the troops," Snow said.

Congress is due to vote this week on an emergency war funding bill to go before US President George W. Bush, with Democrats seeking to use the legislation to hasten the end of the war.

Due to the delay in agreeing the budget, the Pentagon was Tuesday to notify Congress that it intended to transfer 1.4 billion dollars from Navy and Air Force personnel accounts to fund the US Army operations in the war on terror.

So far five such transfers have been made, totalling 4.9 billion dollars, Snow said.

"The Army operations and maintenance account, which is the principal account covering day-to-day operations, no longer has any funding available for the fourth quarter," Snow said.

That meant that it would become impossible to plan ahead, even to pay to bring the troops home.

"That's not going to happen. You know that that's not going to happen. I know it's not going to happen. Congress knows it's not going to happen. They're going to get this fixed," he said.

Source: Agence France-Presse