President Bush pointedly declined to back Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s embattled Prime Minister, yesterday. Hours earlier Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had described the performance of Mr Maliki’s Government as “extremely disappointing”. Hours before that Carl Levin, the Democrat chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had urged the Iraqi Parliament to bring down the Government because it was incapable of delivering reconciliation.

The casual observer could be forgiven for concluding that Washington has given up on Mr Maliki, and that the 57-year-old Shia is on the way out. But that would be wrong. Diplomats and other experts say that he still has Washington’s support – if only because there is no obvious replacement and the last thing Iraq needs now is another long hiatus while a new Government is formed. It took Iraq’s rival factions five months to agree the make-up of Mr Maliki’s Government after the elections of December 2005.

The apparently concerted attacks on Mr Maliki by Mr Bush and Mr Crocker reflect a genuine frustration with Mr Maliki. This year Mr Bush took the immensely risky step of sending an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq to give the Government some space in which to promote reconciliation. Instead of seizing that opportunity it has fallen apart, with three large blocs of Sunnis, radical Shias and secularists quitting and depriving it of almost half its ministers.

In part, therefore, the public criticism is designed to increase the pressure on Mr Maliki and his fellow leaders to set aside their differences and to start delivering – on a fairer distribution of Iraq’s oil revenues, on accepting former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath partiy in senior jobs, on disbanding sectarian militias and many other issues.

The Bush Administration may also be seeking to get the bad news out now, and not on September 11 or 12 when Mr Crocker and General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, will report to Congress on the situation in Iraq. On the basis of that report the Democrat-led Congress will decide whether the US should stay the course or start withdrawing US troops.

General Petraeus and Mr Crocker are expected to say that the security situation in Iraq has improved considerably, and the Administration does not want that good news eclipsed by the lack of political progress.

Various Iraqi politicians have been mooted as replacements for Mr Maliki – the former prime ministers Iyad Allawi and Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and the Shia Vice-President, Adel Abdul-Mehdi. But as one Western diplomat said yesterday, Mr Maliki has faced huge difficulties, given the depth and bitterness of his country’s sectarian divides, and while "it's easy to say others would do a better job, a more charismatic figure would still face the same challenges and problems".

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