The long-awaited assessment says that some aspects of the high-stakes strategy are working well, after a year of record bloodshed, but many of the advances in the nine-year war remain fragile and reversible.

The report, which Obama is set to unveil later Thursday, says that after a relentless US campaign Al-Qaeda's leadership in Pakistan is weaker than at any stage of the war launched after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Advertisement: Story continues below Progress will permit a "responsible reduction" to begin of US forces in Afghanistan, currently at nearly 100,000, next July, though a full handover to Afghan security is not envisaged until at least 2014, the review said.

And the always testing US anti-terror alliance with Pakistan has been "substantial" but also "uneven" in the last year, since Obama vowed to forge a new relationship of mutual trust and respect with Islamabad, the report said.

The review, the product of a two-month period of assessment of all aspects of US war strategy, comes nine years into the longest US war abroad, which is taking an ever increasing toll on US troops and Afghan civilians.

Obama called Afghan President Hamid Karzai ahead of the report's release, with both stressing a "focus on the sanctuary of terrorists," the Afghan government said.

The phrase is an apparent reference to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, which is a base for Taliban fighters operating in Afghanistan and the global headquarters of Al-Qaeda.

According to an overview of the report the White House released, no major shifts in strategy are planned or needed, though some aspects of the US approach, especially in Pakistan, should be adjusted.

"Most important, Al-Qaeda's senior leadership in Pakistan is weaker and under more sustained pressure than at any other point since it fled Afghanistan in 2001," the document said.

"In Pakistan, we are laying the foundation for a strategic partnership based on mutual respect and trust, through increased dialogue, improved cooperation, and enhanced exchange and assistance programs.

"And in Afghanistan, the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, although these gains remain fragile and reversible."

"While the strategy is showing progress across all three assessed areas of Al-Qaeda, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the challenge remains to make our gains durable and sustainable."

Obama, for whom the Afghan war is a prime foreign policy challenge and a vital plank of his eventual presidential legacy, was due to directly address the report before reporters at the White House later on Thursday.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were then to offer a detailed briefing into the war effort.

The overview says that progress in Afghanistan was most evident in gains Afghan and coalition forces were making in clearing Taliban heartlands in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

But it did not dwell in depth on the dismay among US officials over corruption in Afghanistan and in the Karzai government, revealed by leaked documents quoted in media reports in recent weeks.

US strategy critics insist that it is too ambitious, that Afghan forces will always lack the cohesion needed to keep order, and that no end is in sight for US troops.

The overview released by the White House said US and international forces in Afghanistan had accelerated the growth of the Afghan armed forces, but that "significant developmental challenges remain."

Administration officials had on Wednesday played down two intelligence reports cited by newspapers, which apparently paint a less optimistic picture of the war than that seen in the administration report.

US spy agencies believe the US-led war effort could be doomed unless Pakistan cracks down on militant sanctuaries inside its border, the Los Angeles Times and New York Times reported.

Defense officials say the intelligence accounts are "behind the curve," lacking insights from troops on the frontline in a fluid situation.

"We have agreed to disagree," one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

Progress in Afghanistan has come at a high cost: more foreign troops -- nearly 700 -- died in 2010 than in any year of the nine-year conflict, and Washington has waged public spats with Kabul and Islamabad.

The war also faces waning public support: 60 percent of Americans surveyed in an ABC News/Washington Post poll out Thursday believe that the war is not worth fighting, up seven points since July.

On a cost-benefit basis, only 34 percent of those polled believe the Afghan war has been worth fighting, down nine points and setting a new low.

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