When the latest deadline for a reconciliation package of laws designed to end Iraq's violent insurgency came and went with little progress being shown, few people outside Baghdad's heavily fortified "Green Zone" noticed or cared.

The end-May target, self-imposed by Iraqi politicians in an apparent bid to placate the Americans, was always somewhat arbitrary. Attempts to end the country's agonising civil war through political rather than military means have never achieved much measurable success on the ground and expectations for a breakthrough this time were low from the start.