Dick Cheney’s talks in Baghdad yesterday sought to reshape the congressional debate on funding of the military by sounding a note of urgency to Iraq’s fractured and ineffectual Government. The catalogue of US misreadings of Iraqi realities since 2003 has diminished the value attached in Baghdad to advice from Washington, but in this instance the Vice-President’s message made down-to-earth sense. He was there to underline to the entire Iraqi leadership that the UNsponsored “compact with Iraq”, signed by 70 delegations last week in Sharm el-Sheikh, binds Iraq to early action on three fronts. Iraq needs to isolate extremists, promote administrative and economic reforms, and end the legislative paralysis that blocks these. Political progress is also critical for turning last week’s promises of cooperation from Iraq’s neighbours, many of which sympathise with the Sunni minority, into concrete acts of support.

The stand-off in Washington over Congress’s attempt to impose timetables for withdrawing American troops has resulted in a shifting of the argument to these political “benchmarks”. The White House opposes the latest congressional draft, mainly because of the arbitrary cut-off points it contains, but it is agreed that there must be political action in Baghdad to match, and justify, the heightened American military effort.

General David Petraeus, who assumed the US command in January, says that the Washington clock is ticking faster than the clock in Iraq. It is imperative to slow down the first by showing results on the ground, and to speed up the second through progress on national reconciliation.

The problem with the first task is that it does not take many monstrous car bombs to obscure the reduction, since January, in Baghdad’s inter-communal strife. The problem with the second is caused by an inexperienced Government riven by mutual suspicions, operating in a context of violence that would tax the most solid administration. The Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, does not command the loyalty even of his own cabinet, not least because he has only recently begun to think like a national leader rather than just a unifier of multiple Shia factions. Until he visited in March at American urging, Mr al-Maliki had never set foot in the overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province. That journey was symbolically vital because Anbar is no longer the al-Qaeda stronghold it was; 22 out of 24 Sunni elders have turned against the extremists and are cooperating with the coalition, encouraging their followers to join the Army and police and to serve in local government. A few months ago that would have been unthinkable. These Sunnis deserve proof that they will have a fair deal in a democratic Iraq.

Most Iraqis want what Mr Cheney demanded: a parliament that does what it was elected to do, pass laws. Essential laws – on sharing oil revenues equitably, on allowing noncriminal former Baathists to hold government jobs and on provincial elections – have been unconscionably delayed. Yet Iraq’s parliament still plans to take its traditional two-month summer break in July, and Mr Cheney was right to protest. Iraq’s future should not be determined by America’s electoral cycle. And the US Congress should be more understanding of the difficulties of the compromises required. But Iraq’s politicians ultimately have the fate of the country in their hands.