Gordon Brown came under renewed pressure yesterday to grant asylum to Iraqis working for the British after the British Ambassador in Baghdad paid an emotional tribute to their courage and dedication.

Dominic Asquith said that some local employees were under “very, very severe threat”. He said that he had “unbounded admiration” for the courage of those who braved death threats to work for Britain, and that the Government had a “duty of care” to all staff. “We could not do this without them coming to work with us,” he told The Times.

The Prime Minister is also coming under pressure from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence, which believe that Iraqis serving on the front line with the British Army or in high-profile jobs at the British Embassy should be granted asylum if they want to leave.

Mr Asquith has held four farewell luncheons over the past week at the embassy in Baghdad with groups of his 50 or so local employees, from electricians to interpreters. “There is a real friendship,” he said, speaking in between packing his bags before his imminent departure from his posting.

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Mr Brown is reviewing the status of Britain’s Iraqi staff after The Times revealed that its 91 interpreters and other staff working for the British forces in southern Iraq will receive no special help in seeking asylum, .

Since then, at least one interpreter who had worked for the British has been kidnapped, tortured and killed by Shia militiamen in Basra. His brother, who still works with the Army, has been threatened and fears for his life.

Mr Asquith, wearing an open-neck shirt, a pair of bright red braces and a bandage on a hand injury sustained during a weekend game of cricket, insisted that he did not want to second-guess what ministers would decide. But his passionate defence of the Iraqi staff and their importance is bound to increase the pressure on Whitehall to reverse its policy.

“It is because of what they do for us and the risks that they go through to do it that people back in London are looking at how best to respond to the duty of care we have to all staff,” the ambassador said.

In London, one Whitehall source foreshadowed a government U-turn, saying: “I can’t imagine that we’re going to carry out a review and come up with no change in our policy. That wouldn’t make sense. But we have to focus on those people who have put their lives at risk to help us, and we also have to look at what is practical. This is an area which is of concern to the Home Office.”

The Times has learnt that, along with Iraqi staff in Basra, embassy staff in Baghdad have also been affected by violence. One Iraqi working in the visa section was abducted by gunmen and later released. She then received death threats because of her work. She was unable to return home and had to live in quarters in the embassy compound. Work has now been found for her as a receptionist at a British embassy in the Gulf.

Mr Asquith said that he had received several personal appeals for help from staff at the embassy, but that no one had asked him directly for asylum in Britain. He said that embassy officials did their utmost to protect those most under threat. “We talk through with them what they think they need, what reaction they need to take and then do our best to make sure that it is possible to allow them to do it.”

Sometimes employees just wanted time off from work until the threat had died down, or they wanted get out of Iraq for a while. Some, however, wanted to move to another country.

The ambassador said that he did not feel a pang of guilt at leaving his Iraqi staff behind any more than all the other members of the embassy. He had simply come to the end of his mission.

“They [the local employees] are extraordinary, robust and resilient people,” he said. “They are doing it, not under duress in the sense that they don’t have to come and work for us, but their contribution really is understood in London, people know that. There is not an attempt I have ever seen by anyone in London to underestimate what they do.”

Mr Asquith defended Britain’s mission in southern Iraq, which has been criticised in the US. “We haven’t lost,” he said. “What did we come and do in the south east? We came to create the conditions in four provinces to hand them over to the Iraqi authorities. We have done it in three and we are doing it in the fourth.”

He insisted that much progress had been made with the Iraqi Army, although more needed to be done with the police. Control of security in Basra should be handed back to the Iraqi security forces by the end of the year, he said.

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