WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has overstated U.S.-funded job figures in Iraq due to what the government said was an accounting error, but critics say may be a bid to paint a rosier picture on the ground.

Increased employment in Iraq is seen as a measure of progress as the country moves toward January elections.

State Department figures released on Sept. 22 show the U.S. government overstated by more than 30,000 the number of Iraqis working on projects funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, one of Washington's biggest employers in Iraq.

The Iraq Weekly Status report said 45,844 Iraqis were employed in projects funded by USAID, according to Sept. 15 data, compared with 88,436 recorded in the previous week's report, amounting to a 48.2 percent decrease. The 88,436 figure was later adjusted to 55,463 jobs.

"(This) decrease in (USAID) employment numbers reflects correction of a previous accounting error," said a small-type footnote at the bottom of the unclassified Sept. 22 document.

Asked to explain the error, USAID spokesman Jose Fuentes said he was looking into it.

FOCUS ON THE POSITIVE

Democrats accuse the Bush administration of offering an overly optimistic view of Iraq, with the party's presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry accusing President Bush of living in a "fantasy world of spin."

Reconstruction expert Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think-tank, said overstating such numbers was in line with the administration's tendency to stress the positive and downplay negative news.

"The overstating probably fits with the tendency of meeting the master's desire for happy news," Barton said.

But Barton said the real story was not whether figures had been inflated but why so few new jobs had been created in a country where unemployment may be as high as 50 percent and is seen as contributing to the insurgency.

A little over $1.2 billion has been spent out of the $18.4 billion Congress rushed through last year to rebuild Iraq.

The total number of Iraqis estimated to be working on U.S.-funded projects was 74,770 in the latest State Department weekly report released on Thursday, a decrease of 2.5 percent over the previous week's total of 76,699. More than half of these jobs are for USAID projects.

One U.S. government official, who asked not be named, said there had been some confusion over how to calculate the number of jobs given to Iraqis and whether work that lasted for a day or even a few hours should be included.

"Basically, most people think we should count employment that would generate income for a family and something which is sustainable, rather than just a short-term job," the official said.

A spokeswoman for the Iraq Project and Contracting Office, which handles U.S.-funded contracts, said there was an "ebb and flow" in the number of jobs for Iraqis, depending on security and the number of projects in any given week.

The State Department hopes that by the end of 2005, U.S. funding will create an additional 800,000 jobs in Iraq.