Iraq has made "extremely disappointing" progress towards reconciling its warring sects, the US ambassador said today, just three weeks before he is due to present a pivotal report on Iraq to the US Congress.
In some of the bluntest language used by a US official towards prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's fractured coalition government, ambassador Ryan Crocker also warned that US support for Mr Maliki's administration was not open-ended.
"Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned, to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself," Mr Crocker said.
"We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank cheque," he told reporters in Baghdad.
The report to Congress by Mr Crocker and the top US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, due around September 11th, is widely seen as a watershed moment that could trigger a change in US policy in Iraq.
Pressure is growing on US president George W Bush to show progress in the unpopular war or start bringing troops home, with benchmarks set by Washington aimed at reconciling majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs seen as a litmus test.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told France's RTL Radio in an interview from Baghdad that Europe must play a bigger role in Iraq because "the Americans will not be able to get this country out of difficulty alone".
Mr Kouchner is the first French minister to visit Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein. France, then under President Jacques Chirac, strongly opposed it and angered Bush by refusing to join his "Coalition of the Willing".