Iraq progress 'extremely disappointing': US envoy

Baghdad, Aug 22: The Iraqi government has made ''extremely disappointing'' progress towards reconciling its warring Shi'ite and Sunni Arab sects, the US ambassador said today.

In blunt language, Crocker said Washington still supported Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's shaky Shi'ite-led coalition but that support should not be taken for granted.

''Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned, to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself,'' Ryan Crocker said, just three weeks before he delivers a pivotal report to Congress.

''We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank cheque,'' he told reporters in Baghdad.

The reconciliation targets set by Washington include a revenue-sharing oil law, constitutional reform, setting a date for provincial elections and easing restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party working in the civil service and the military.

One of the few success stories in Iraq that Crocker and military commander General David Petraeus will be able to take to Washington next month is the strategy of forming alliances with tribal sheikhs in the restive western Anbar province.

However, he said such a sectarian-based initiative could not be considered as real reconciliation between warring sects, the main goal for Washington and Baghdad.

''What has happened in Anbar is important, it's clearly positive, it is probably an essential prerequisite for reconciliation, but it isn't reconciliation,'' Crocker said.

Pressure is growing on President George W Bush to show progress in the unpopular war or start bringing troops home.

Crocker and Petraeus are due to deliver their report to Congress on September 11 or 12.

US forces have launched a nationwide offensive against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and Shi'ite militias, expecting such groups to step up attacks to try to influence debate in Washington before the report.

''The whole premise of ''surge'' was to bring levels of violence down and keep them down so that there would be the time and space for the political leadership to get on with the business of national reconciliation,'' Crocker said.

''That first part of it clearly has happened.'' Crocker referred to the success in forming alliances with Sunni Arab sheikhs to police their own communities in western Anbar, once Iraq's most violent area, as a ''mini-benchmark''.

He said similar models were being considered for Iraq's mainly Shi'ite south.

Crocker praised the idea of local policing compared with the wider national police established since the invasion, which he described as ''a fairly awful experiment''.

REUTERS>