Yes, but

It seems Iraq has finally assembled - although "cobbled together" might be more accurate - a new government. Well, almost.

Iraq's parliament has approved six new ministers to fill key contested cabinet posts, but one nominee immediately refused to join the government.

Hashim al-Shible, a Sunni Arab, turned down the post of human rights minister.

There had been seven open posts and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari named nominees to six of them. Four of those are Sunnis. Jaafari had been striving to get more Sunnis into the government based on the idea that this would undercut the insurgency.

Yes, but - it probably won't: The insurgents and those who would support them are more apt to view Sunni ministers as Quislings than as their representatives. But since the alternative - a heavily Shiite cabinet - quite possibly could make matters worse, it's probably better than nothing.

However, on precisely that point Shible's reasons for rejecting his nomination are worth noting. He said

he had not been consulted about the appointment and was selected only because he was a Sunni.

"Concentrating on sectarian identities leads to divisions in the society and state, and for that reason I respectfully decline the post," he said, quoted by AP news agency.

A man who refuses to deal in sectarianism is a good thing to see.

Yes, but - the very fact that he declined on that basis only serves to point up just how real and sharp those sectarian divisions are and just how much they are driving events in Iraq, not only the insurgency, not only the fearsome prospect of civil war, but also the formation and functioning of government. Even if Jaafari does manage to pull together a government (he still needs a human rights minister and a deputy prime minister; he's looking for a woman for the latter post), there are not many examples of governments successfully pulling off that kind of balancing act for more than a short time. In Lebanon, the classic example of the ethnically-balanced government, "the political balance of power ... has always been very delicate," the Oxford Business Group noted recently - and whatever stability Lebanon has at times enjoyed has been purchased at the cost of a devastating 15-year civil war. And even now the same old divisions are behind new political crises.

Perhaps Iraq will be able to pull off what others haven't and hold it together for a while - or at least for a Henry Kissinger-style "decent interval" to allow US withdrawal before Iraq descends into chaos, which may be what the Bushites still in touch with reality have been reduced to hoping for. But, despite the fact that the existence, more or less, of a Jaafari administration is surely an improvement over the vacuum that existed, frankly I still very much doubt it.