(Recasts, adds comments from Obama, paragraph 6; White House's Snow, paragraphs 14-15)

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday shuffled U.S. military commanders for Iraq ahead of a policy shift on the war next week but faced resistance from Democrats to a proposal to increase troops there.

Bush, under pressure from a U.S. Congress now under Democratic control to begin withdrawing troops, plans to unveil a new Iraq strategy as early as next Wednesday that could include a short-term increase of up to 20,000 U.S. troops to try to bring stability to Baghdad.

The shake-up among officials in charge of the unpopular war, including the nomination of former Baghdad envoy John Negroponte to be deputy secretary of state to beef up diplomatic efforts on Iraq, comes as the U.S. death toll and sectarian violence continue to mount.

The top two Democrats in Congress, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urged Bush in a letter to reject a contemplated troop increase in Iraq and begin a phased withdrawal within months.

"Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain," they wrote.

And Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said he told the president during a White House meeting with lawmakers that a troop increase "was a bad idea."

Senators said Bush gave no indication he had definitely decided on a troop increase and the White House said he had not yet made up his mind. A troop increase was endorsed on Friday by Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

Elsewhere, one of Bush's closest Arab allies, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, joined criticism over the handling of Saddam Hussein's execution. He said the "barbaric" hanging had turned the ousted Iraqi leader into a martyr.

Looking ahead to implementation of his new Iraq plan, Bush began a shuffle of the U.S. military's war leadership in order to carry out the policy.

He nominated Adm. William Fallon to replace Gen. John Abizaid as the head of U.S. Central Command, in charge of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also replaced America's top commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey -- a skeptic of troop increases -- with Lt. Gen. David Petraeus.

Petraeus was a top commander of the 2003 Iraq invasion and oversaw a new U.S. military manual on fighting insurgencies that stresses understanding politics, ethics and local culture.

Casey would become the U.S. Army chief of staff.

White House spokesman Tony Snow rejected a contention from Reid that Bush was changing commanders because they are not telling him what he wants to hear.

"Just flat inaccurate," Snow said.

In a White House ceremony, Bush announced Negroponte's appointment and cited his experience as ambassador to Iraq. He also nominated retired Adm. Mike McConnell to replace Negroponte as director of national intelligence.

OUTRAGE OVER EXECUTION

Another expected announcement is that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, will be nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. officials said.

Khalilzad, an Afghan-born Sunni Muslim, has irritated some of Iraq's now-dominant Shi'ites in his efforts to draw Saddam's fellow Sunnis from insurgency into politics.

Bush began overhauling his Iraq team in November when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned after Bush's Republicans lost control of Congress in elections dominated by war concerns.

As outrage grew among Sunni Arabs over an illicit video showing Shi'ite officials taunting Saddam on the gallows, Mubarak said international experts deemed the trial illegal and said he had asked Bush to postpone last Saturday's execution.

"The pictures of the execution were revolting and barbaric," Mubarak said in an interview with Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Two of Saddam's aides also convicted for crimes against humanity will hang this week, officials said.

In neighboring Shi'ite Iran, influential cleric Ahmad Khatami told worshipers that Washington wanted to use Saddam's execution to stoke tensions between Shi'ite and Sunnis. (Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Susan Cornwell and Carol Giacomo in Washington, Ibon Villelabeitia and Claudia Parsons in Baghdad, Edmund Blair in Tehran and Jonathan Wright in Cairo)

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