Less than two weeks ago, Iraqi leaders announced a power-sharing deal to fold the country's major ethnic and religious factions into a fragile unity government led by Mr. Maliki, a religious Shiite who took office in 2006 and presided over an ebb in bloodshed.
Lifting the ban will allow the three Sunni politicians to hold office, and should help to cement the participation of a large Sunni-backed political alliance in Iraq's fragile unity government.
Still, Bishop Ackerman said, "To a large extent, the fragile unity of this church is in the hands of this general convention".
A stunning electoral success for Bart de Wever's Flemish nationalist party, which won the most parliamentary seats, is a significant new challenge to the fragile unity of a federal country where tensions between French and Dutch speakers run deep, and where voters in one region cannot vote for parties in the other.
In a development that risks further undermining the fragile unity of Nigeria and its 15-month-old democracy, Muslims have been moving into the Shariah states and Christians moving out, according to interviews here and with officials from other areas.
He said the original goal had been undermined by "realities outside our own control," including fragmentation of rebel groups into warring subgroups and a new division in the capital, Khartoum, between northern and southern leaders who had been working in a fragile so-called government of national unity.
This is a risky and controversial decision that risks fracturing the fragile unity of the democratic campaigners in Burma.
See articleIn Tunisia, a fragile transitional unity government struggled to restore order, promising elections in six months.
"Ourselves alone in the radical centre" risks preserving the party's fragile unity over strategic questions at the cost of impotence.
The renewed religious violence in the Moluccas has increased concerns that Indonesia's fragile unity could be shaken by sectarian tension.
