Formation of new government hailed (tentatively)

After an agonizing eight-month delay, the first concrete steps toward the formation of a new coalition Iraqi government were greeted by senior U.S. officials Thursday as a major advance in stabilizing the long-suffering nation. But independent analysts warned that the power-sharing deal apparently agreed Wednesday night and partially implemented Thursday remained fragile and that any new government resulting from it was likely to be unwieldy or ineffective, at best. "There's great distrust among the different factions and leaders; there's no concept of alternation of power and loyal opposition; and the fundamental question of how the different communities in Iraq will share power in a new political order, especially the question of the place of Sunni Arabs in that political order, are still unresolved," noted Paul Pillar, a former top Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who now teaches at Georgetown University. "Today's walkout is just a hint of many more disagreements and impasses yet to come," he predicted.