(Adds Rice postpones visit to Democratic Republic of the Congo, details, quotes, paragraphs 5-6, 10, 15-16)

By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - Under pressure to withdraw from Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush said on Thursday he would send his secretaries of state and defense to the Middle East to reassure allies of the U.S. commitment to the region.

Bush made the announcement as he released a report on Iraqi progress in meeting U.S. political and security goals that his administration said painted a mixed picture but that critics seized upon as further grounds for a U.S. pullout.

In presenting the report, a focal point in the Washington debate over whether the United States should keep its roughly 158,500 troops in Iraq, Bush urged skeptics to wait until a more formal government assessment is released in September.

He also said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will travel to unspecified countries in the region in early August to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to the Middle East.

As a result of the focus on Iraq, Rice decided to postpone her visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories next week.

She also put off a visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo next week but plans to visit Accra to discuss economic issues and Lisbon for talks with Portuguese officials and possibly with the "Quartet" of Middle East peace mediators.

The State Department said Rice would visit Jerusalem and Ramallah in late July before she and Gates travel to the Middle East, where their chief focus will be Iraq.

'VITAL STRATEGIC PRIORITY'

"They will meet with our allies, re-emphasize our commitment to the international compact of Sharm el-Sheikh, reassure our friends that the Middle East remains a vital strategic priority for the United States," Bush said at a news conference.

The compact is a five-year plan providing financial, political and technical support to Iraqi institutions in return for security and economic reforms. It was endorsed at a conference in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in May that gathered major powers and Iraq's neighbors.

U.S. officials said there could be a regional meeting with U.S. allies during the trip by Rice and Gates but it was likely to be smaller than the Sharm el-Sheikh group and would probably not include Iran and Syria.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said there were no plans now for Rice to meet Syrian or Iranian officials despite a scathing assessment in the interim report that both nations continue to "foster instability in Iraq."

"We see little change in Iran's policy of seeking U.S. defeat through direct financial and material support for attacks against U.S. military and civilians in Iraq," the report said.

"The Syrian government ... allows major insurgent organizers and financiers to operate in Damascus," it added, saying it estimates nearly 80 percent of suicide bombers in Iraq are foreign and the "vast majority" come in via Syria.

"This Syria-based network is able to supply some 50 to 80 suicide bombers to AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) per month," it added. "Syria can and must do more to shut down these networks."

McCormack said the United States would like Iran and Syria to play a more constructive role in Iraq before more talks.

"We are open to those kinds of engagements," he told reporters. "But ... we as well as the Iraqis and others are going to need to see some change in behavior." (Additional reporting by David Morgan and Sue Pleming in Washington and by Adam Entous in Jerusalem)

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