Friday, September 14, 2007

White House report shows little progress

WASHINGTON - A new White House report on Iraq will show improved progress on just one of 18 political and security goals — efforts to allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to rejoin the political process, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

The latest conclusions, to be released Friday, largely track a comparable poor assessment in July. The earlier White House report said the Iraqi government had made satisfactory gains toward eight benchmarks, unsatisfactory marks on eight and mixed results on two.

Congress required President Bush to submit the report to lawmakers, assessing whether the Iraqi government had made progress toward achieving the 18 goals. In the new report, the Iraqi government showed movement on only one of the benchmarks.

The goal of enacting and implementing legislation on so-called "de-Baathification" was rated satisfactory instead of unsatisfactory, the official said Thursday evening. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the report had not been made public.

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