Speaker Nabih Berri said Thursday that the Lebanese Army has implemented 90 percent of the cessation of hostilities agreement in the South Litani area and will completely finalize what’s left by year’s end.

“This is what UNIFIL, the Mechanism and Army Commander General Rodolphe Haykal have confirmed,” Berri added, in a meeting with a delegation from the Press Syndicate.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri met Thursday with U.S. Ambassador Michel Issa in Ain el-Tineh, for the second day in a row.

On Wednesday, Berri met with Issa and a delegation of the American Task Force for Lebanon.

As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, the Lebanese are living day by day amid fears and threats of a renewed war.

The Lebanese army has been tasked by the government to disarm Hezbollah by the year end, under U.S. pressure and Israel's almost daily strikes. However, the army's resources are too limited and Israel is accusing it of not doing the job.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon has said that Israeli forces fired on its peacekeepers Tuesday in the country’s south near the de facto border with Israel, reporting no injuries.

"Yesterday, peacekeepers in vehicles patrolling the Blue Line were fired upon by IDF (Israeli army) soldiers in a Merkava tank near Sarda," a UNIFIL statement said Wednesday.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sent a letter to Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem telling him that “Hezbollah’s decisions are left to its leadership in Lebanon,” sources told An-Nahar newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

“This is what he (Khamenei) used to practice with the late Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,” the sources added.

An Aegean Airlines flight from Cyprus’ Larnaca to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport was unexpectedly diverted through Lebanese airspace on Wednesday morning due to severe winter weather, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

“The passengers were not informed in real time that the aircraft had crossed into the territory of a country officially at war with Israel,” the channel noted.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa said Wednesday that Israel differentiates between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah.

"The negotiations with the Lebanese government and the war on Hezbollah are two separate things to Israel," Issa told reporters in a press conference after a meeting with Speaker Nabih Berri and the American Task Force for Lebanon.

A Sofia court on Wednesday refused to extradite a shipowner wanted by Lebanon over a devastating blast at Beirut's port in 2020.

Lebanon wants Bulgaria to extradite Igor Grechushkin, a 48-year-old Russian-Cypriot, over the disaster.

Turkey is mediating between Syria and Hezbollah on the one hand and between Syria and Iran on the other, which reflects Ankara's attempt to control the dynamics of a delicate regional phase characterized by rapidly shifting balances, a media report said.

A well-informed source told the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper that Turkey has succeeded in recent weeks in bringing together a high-ranking official from the new Syrian regime and a prominent Hezbollah official in meetings held repeatedly behind the scenes. Ankara has also hosted high-ranking officials from Syria and Iran.

Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji told Wednesday his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi that he can only meet him in a neutral country but not in Iran, after the latter invited him to visit Tehran.

Rajji said, in a letter to Araghchi, that his refusal to visit Iran is because of the circumstances which are not currently favorable and not because he doesn't want to hold talks with Iran.