Similarly, legislation setting a date for provincial elections -- another move seen as central to empowering Sunnis -- is expected to be delayed until fall, the report says.
"Reconciliation remains a serious unfulfilled objective," the report says.
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Iraq violence is up since troop boost
Attacks have increased in areas that were relatively peaceful before the U.S. buildup, the Pentagon reports.
The World
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The report is comparatively upbeat regarding the performance of the Iraqi army in the new security push, finding that though initial battalions deployed to Baghdad were short troops, battalions arriving later had more soldiers.
The Iraqi government occasionally has intervened politically in the army's operations, however. The report says some government officials have bypassed the chain of command to order specific army operations, some of which were designed to pursue sectarian goals.
Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the U.S. Army commander who until last month headed the training of Iraqi units, said he expected the readiness of deploying Iraqi units to decline as the Baghdad security plan unfolded, because the most capable battalions were the first to be sent.
"We could leave those units in Baghdad for a much longer period of time, thereby reducing the turbulence and probably making the tactical fight a little cleaner," Dempsey said Wednesday at a Pentagon news conference.
"We learn enormous lessons when we move them around. We learn about what their leaders are capable of, we learn about the degree of reliability and loyalty."
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peter.spiegel@latimes.com
