Maliki refuses Sunni demands: Will they withdraw from government?

On Wednesday, the main Sunni bloc suspended their participation in the Maliki government and parliament threatening to walk away completely if the Shia government didn't meet certain reconciliation demands within a week.

Maliki has responded.

The Shiite-led Iraqi government issued a sharp response Friday to a Sunni political bloc that is threatening to pull out of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration, saying the group's "threatening, pressuring and blackmail" cannot impede Iraq's progress.

In a four-page written statement, Maliki spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh dismissed each of 11 demands made by the Accordance Front, Iraq's largest Sunni political group. Dabbagh accused the Accordance Front of working for its own political gains rather than for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

At the very least, it will take months to climb back from this showdown, and in the meantime, assuming the Accordance Front follows through and quits, there will be no Sunni representation in the government at all.

That means no political reconciliation, and the "breathing space" of the surge, paid for with US blood, is wasted.

We'll have to wait to see how this all plays out, but it's definitely not good.

Update: The Christian Science Monitor has a broader piece discussing the "crisis."