(Adds analyst comment, Owen as youngest foreign secretary)

By Katherine Baldwin and Sumeet Desai

LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown named rising star David Miliband on Thursday as Britain's youngest foreign minister in 30 years in a government shake-up designed to make a clean break from the Tony Blair years.

Brown, who is promising change to woo back voters after 10 years of Labour Party rule and draw a line under the unpopular Iraq war, also named ally Alistair Darling as finance minister in a reshuffle that brought in many new faces.

As a minister in Blair's cabinet, Miliband, now 41, voted to support the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 but was widely reported by British media to have been sceptical about the war.

Brown also gave a junior post to Mark Malloch Brown, a former U.N. deputy secretary general who has been critical of Britain and the United States over the Iraq war. He was named minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations.

On Brown's first full day in office, there was a stark reminder of the Iraq war. Three British troops were killed by a roadside bomb, taking the number of British deaths in the Iraq war to 156. One was from Brown's own parliamentary constituency.

Analysts said the appointments of Miliband and Malloch Brown signalled Brown's wish for a subtle shift in approach on foreign policy after Blair's closeness to Washington that was unpopular among many Britons.

"That has been part of the agenda: to have a constructive, friendly relationship with the United States but to be critical as far as necessary," said Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University.

"It will be a subtle change, not a confrontational change."

Brown's spokesman said the prime minister believed "very strongly" in the importance of the Anglo-U.S. relationship.

NEXT ELECTION

Blair stepped aside as prime minister on Wednesday, making way for Brown to try to boost Labour's chances of winning the next election, due by May 2010 at the latest.

Analysts expect little change in economic policy under Darling, 53, after Brown's successful decade-long tenure as finance minister.

Brown appointed Jacqui Smith as Britain's first female home secretary (interior minister). She will face the challenge of preventing any more attacks by Islamist militants.

The jobs given to Brown allies such as leadership campaign manager Jack Straw, Treasury right-hand man Ed Balls and fellow Scot Douglas Alexander underlined his policy plans.

Straw, 60, will have to tackle a prisons overcrowding crisis. Balls, 40, was named children, schools and families minister, highlighting Brown's emphasis on education.

Many Britons remain unhappy with public services, even though Blair's government invested heavily in them. The health portfolio went to political heavyweight Alan Johnson.

Alexander, 39, who will run Labour's election campaign, became minister for international development. Brown is passionate about fighting global poverty and disease.

But Brown's most pressing foreign policy challenge is how to meet British voters' calls for troops to return from Iraq and to rebuild public trust shattered by Blair's approach to the war.

"The opportunities and challenges of the modern world require, in my view, a diplomacy that is patient as well as purposeful, which listens as well as leads," said Miliband, Britain's youngest foreign secretary since David Owen in 1977.

Britain has been reducing troop numbers in Iraq and now has about 5,500 in the south. While Brown has pledged to respect Britain's commitments in Iraq, there is speculation the withdrawal may accelerate.

"Miliband wasn't closely associated with the decisions that were taken in the Iraq war," said David Mepham, head of the international unit at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

According to media reports, Miliband was uneasy about the conflict and also voiced dismay in cabinet at Blair's reluctance to call for an immediate ceasefire in last year's Lebanon war. (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft, Jeremy Lovell, Simon Rabinovitch and Sophie Walker)

AlertNet news is provided by