( BBC ) The Iraqi government has made little progress in meeting key political and military targets set by the US, a White House report says.
It says Iraq has performed satisfactory on nine out of 18 benchmarks - one more than in a previous assessment in July.
Among the failures, it cites militia control over security forces and not enacting laws on sharing oil resources.
The report comes a day after President George W Bush announced a troop withdrawal from Iraq.
He said he had accepted the advice of the US commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, who gave his own progress report to Congress earlier this week and said the recent military "surge" in Iraq was working.
Mr Bush's plan would take troop numbers back to about 130,000 by July 2008 - the level before the build-up began in February.
The Democrats had called for a change of course, accusing the president of giving no plan on how to end the war.