IRAQ - Nov. 24 - Sunni-Shiite Split Over Ramadan's End.

For the first time in many years, the Sunnis and Shiites have chosen different days to celebrate the end of the Ramadan fasting month. In the streets of Baghdad on Nov. 24, Sunnis flaunted their cigarettes after the Sunni Council of Muslim Scholars declared sightings of the new moon - marking the end of Ramadan - in the mainly Sunni northern town of Mosul at night on Nov. 23. Shiites looked on, awaiting a pronouncement by their religious authorities - known as the hawza - in the holy city of Najaf. (Iraqis recalled the era of Saddam Hussein, when the Baathist dictator proclaimed the first day of the Eid holiday, alternating between the Shiite and Sunni timetables depending on his shifting relations with Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia. Says one Iraqi telecommunications engineer: "It was the religion of politics. Now we have the politics of religion". The difference over the date of Eid has played havoc with the three-day holiday. The two branches of Islam were divided in 661 AD following the assassination of the Prophet's son-in-law and political successor Ali Ibn Abu Talib, who was also his cousin. Sunnis are the majority in the Arab world but the minority in Iraq and are concentrated mainly north of Baghdad. There is also a Shiite majority in Iran. The differences within Iraq appear to be widening. Last Ramadan, the two sects also broke their daylight fasts at different times but Iraqis say the previous six-minute interval has widened to 16 minutes. But even among the Shiites now there is a split between those following Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani and the ones led by young mullah Muqtada Al Sadr - the latter regarding himself an Arab Iraqi Shiite, as distinct from Sistani's Iranian roots - and the two communities have adopted different days for Ramadan's end). In accordance with the will of the Shiite majority on the IGC, the ministries and the Governing Council were open but many civil servants failed to show up. The IGC's November Chairman Jalal Talabani, who leads the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), tells a Baghdad news conference: "I celebrate two Eids".