WASHINGTON - The establishment of a new leadership in Baghdad is good news for the US administration, but the United States still has work to do to reinforce the Iraqi military and government so US troops can start returning home, experts said.
The prolonged wrangling between the different political factions in Iraq over the makeup of the government is also a sign of future difficulties, analysts said.
Jalal Talabani, the first Kurdish head of state in an Arab country, on Thursday named a Shiite leader Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister, ending weeks of bickering since the country's landmark January 30 election that frustrated Iraqis and the international community alike.
The move is unlikely to have an immediate impact on the dangers in the country or the withdrawal of US troops.
The new government helps "strengthen the authentic Iraqi voice which must be found an must be accepted by the Iraqi people if we really are going to make progress," said Frederick Barton, an Iraq specialist at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.
"The new goverment could possibly help to improve the credibility of what's going on in Iraq, but they cannot really make the place safer yet, and that continues to be the overarching concern," he said.
President George W. Bush on Wednesday hailed the election of Talabani and vice presidents Adel Abdul Mahdi and Ghazi al-Yawar by the national assembly as a "momentous step" toward democracy in the country.
Next on Iraq's political timetable is the writing of a constitution, which should be completed by August 15 and ratified by referendum on October 15. If the constitution is passed, general elections for a permanent government will take place in December.
"Iraqis once again have defied their skeptics and have taken an important step toward stabilizing their country under representative government," the Washington Post opined.
"The challenges still to be met by Iraq's emerging leadership during the rest of this year are so daunting as to inspire anxiety in any outside observer," an editorial added.
For Steven Cook with the Council on Foreign Relation, a New York-based think tank, while the new government was clearly "good news," there was "significant concern on the part of US officials and US military commanders on the field that the longer the political stalemate was going to drag on the more it was going to erode the significant goodwill of the Iraqi people resulting from the election."
"Nobody expected it to take this long," he said.
Those difficulties could resurface during the writing of a constitution. "It is uncertain whether the Iraqis would meet the August deadline for a draft constitution or not," Cook said. "You can tell by the kind of political haggling that went on this is going to be a long and drawn out an ometimes messy process."
A timetable for a US withdrawl remains difficult to foresee. Bush has insisted US troops will stay as long as they are needed.
"Several of the major challenges still remain," said Barton, adding that it is "too early" to speak of a withdrawal."
Cook said security "remains tenuous and I think that this new government is not going to want to undermine the US military presence."
Even though "there has been an improvement in the last month or so, the Iraqi security forces can in no way shape or form" handle the insurgency.
"Some people in the military feel pretty strongly they are going to be there for a while," he added.
04/07/2005 18:13 GMT