Washington ? Struggling to defend its Iraq policy, the Bush administration in a 23-page classified report will point to limited progress being made by the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The interim assessment, which will be presented Thursday on Capitol Hill, finds the Iraqi government has failed to pass long-promised laws that Washington has called key to national cohesion and economic recovery, such as legislation that would fairly divide Iraq’s oil resources.

But in a glass-half-full approach, the report will emphasize that the Iraqi government is making some progress in about half of the areas identified earlier this year by Congress. Other areas where Baghdad is not making significant gains will be dismissed as not as critical to the long-term success in Iraq.

The report also will point toward signs of hope throughout Iraq, such as a drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad and opposition to al-Qaida by tribal sheiks in Anbar province.

The primary argument will be that lawmakers should wait until September to judge the U.S. strategy in Iraq. But the report also will not try to sugarcoat what any observer can determine on his own.

One senior administration official, who has read the report, described it as giving the Iraqi government a grade of “incomplete.”

Two administration officials separately confirmed that the report concludes Iraq has not met or made substantial progress toward about half the targets set by Congress and has made progress on or arguably achieved the others.

Neither official would provide examples and spoke on condition of anonymity because the unclassified version had not been released.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a 2007 war spending bill that identified 18 benchmarks for political, security and economic reforms. The list was based on promises made by the Iraqi government when Bush agreed to send in 30,000 additional U.S. troops.