NEW YORK, April 9: Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes —- sometimes political, sometimes violent— says an internal staff report by the United States Embassy and the military command in Baghdad, obtained by the New York Times.

The 10-page report provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq’s political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 out of the 18 provinces “serious” and one “critical.”

The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials, said the New York Times which was given the report by a US government official who is unhappy with the way the war is being conducted.

The report, titled “Provincial Stability Assessment,” underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as non-violent by American officials.

The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shia areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes —- sometimes political, sometimes violent — taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet.

The newspaper said that the report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad.

The writers included officials from the American Embassy’s political branch, reconstruction agencies and the American military command in Baghdad, Mr Speckhard said. The authors also received information from State Department officers in the provinces, he said.

The Times says that the report was part of a periodic briefing on Iraq that the State Department provides to Congress, and has been shown to officials on Capitol Hill, including those involved in budgeting for the reconstruction teams. The newspaper says it is not clear how many top American officials have seen it; the report has not circulated widely at the Defense Department or the National Security Council, spokesmen there said.

Mr Speckhard told the NYT that the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than the recent portrayals by senior military officers. It is dated Jan 31, 2006, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shia shrine in Samarra, which set off reprisals that killed hundreds of Iraqis.