four years in the post.

His replacement is Mr. Peter Willis, a Foreign Office press spokesman in London whose diplomatic career has been spent mainly in Arab countries.

Mr. Kelly yesterday confirmed his departure and the name of his replacement.

"I came in August, 1989 and the appointment is for four years,'' he said.

"My time was up last August and I'm still here.

"My poor successor's known about the job for over a year and he's had difficulty shoe-horning me out of here.

"I'm leaving at the end of April and he comes in about a week before I leave.'' Mr. Kelly said he had earlier been due to leave in December.

"But fortunately, the Queen decided to visit Bermuda and I was able to say to the people in London that it would not be a good idea for a new person to come in with all the arrangements going on.'' Mr. Willis was born in 1944 and has spent his working life in the diplomatic service.

He has spent most of his career in the Arab world, apart from a period at the United Nations in New York and his present post in the news department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Mr. Kelly, 52, came to Bermuda after serving in some of the world's most violent hotspots.

During his posting in the Congo in the early 1960s, civil war was raging. Then he went to Cairo, just in time for the Six-Day War between Egypt and Israel.

In 1983 he was the only Western diplomat in Grenada when the government collapsed and the US led Caribbean troops in.

He has not yet been notified of his next posting, he said yesterday. "It's still a bit uncertain, but I expect to be going back to London in a department in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That is the pattern these days, to do a tour overseas and then a tour at home.

"I'll probably know in the next month or so.'' Mr. Kelly said he would probably go back to London, spend 1995 in Britain and then may possibly follow the route of previous Deputy Governors of Bermuda, who have become governors of British dependent territories in the Caribbean.

"It would make sense to use my expertise, such as it is, in a similar territory -- and that points to the Caribbean,'' he said. "I've been very happy here in Bermuda.''