While no one laments Saddam's passing and violence is down from peak war levels, the country is fragile, with grave tensions between Sunnis and Shiites and Arabs and Kurds that could yet erupt into civil war or tear the state apart.
Indeed, Mr. Agca and many of his right-wing associates were the products of grave political tensions in their native Turkey that pitted violent leftist terrorists against their counterparts on the right.
The area is a killing ground littered with mass graves and tensions are running high.On October 13th colleagues, families and supporters of the missing students staged violent protests against the governor of their home state, Guerrero, setting fire to the state government building.
Despite grave East-West tensions, he succeeded in developing a fairly good working relationship with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei A. Gromyko.
The prospect of talks with the Taliban has already resurrected old ethnic tensions; grave talk of civil war runs quietly in the corridors of diplomacy.
The current standoff between the West and Moscow concerning Ukraine might be viewed as the gravest instance of tension in the post-Cold War era.
It referred to the "grave nature of international tensions and struggle" and "the protracted nature of contest over the international order".
The crisis, American officials say, is far more grave than the political tensions between the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and the country's Sunni Arab minority set off by an arrest warrant on terrorism charges issued in December for Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni vice president.
Cyn-Young Park, an assistant chief economist at the Asian Development Bank, said religious tension was a "grave concern" for parts of the economy.
Nor has China given clues about its intentions in its public statements, voicing grave concern about the rising tensions while being careful not to elevate Mr. Kim's stature.
