During the Ramadan fast last year the governor's office in Kars stopped serving tea for a while.

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Indeed, as the burning-hot summer holiday begins (parliament is about to go into recess), to be followed by the fasting month of Ramadan that will last throughout September, there is a worrying risk that the politicians will again muff their chance to make a breakthrough towards a real accommodation between Iraq's competing sects and groups.

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Jeffrey Hammond, the U.S. commander in Baghdad, said violence in Baghdad during Ramadan had dropped sharply from last year, when 600 attacks occurred.

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Last August, President Obama used the occasion of a White House dinner breaking the Ramadan fast to endorse the construction of a controversial mosque close by the site of the former Twin Towers in Manhattan.

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