Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is the mastermind behind the National Moderation bloc's presidential initiative.

"I was behind this initiative," Berri told ad-Diyar newspaper. "How was I accused of obstructing it?"

The Lebanese and the American mediators agree on many common points regarding the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said.

Berri told ad-Diyar, in remarks published Wednesday, that there are 13 or 14 articles suggested by the U.S. that Lebanon agrees on. Yet, there are points of disagreements.

An Israeli drone strike targeted Wednesday a car in southern Lebanon near the coastal city of Tyre, killing a member of the Palestinian militant Hamas group and a civilian.

Hamas said the strike killed Hadi Mustafa, a member of its armed wing in Lebanon from the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib met Tuesday with Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos in Beirut and discussed the bilateral relations between their countries, the refugee crisis and the border clashes.

In a news conference after their meeting, Kombos encouraged "all parties to engage in a diplomatic dialogue" to "peacefully settle" the Israeli-Lebanese conflict.

Ahead of the U.N. Security Council consultations on Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka said she discussed with caretaker PM Najib Mikati “the importance of adhering to Security Council resolutions for protecting Lebanon from a broader conflagration.”

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil on Tuesday condemned Israel’s war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon.

Israeli opposition chief Yair Lapid has said that he is opposed to military service exemption for ultra-Orthodox Jews, saying Israel’s military “is stretched to the limit.”

“If there is a flare-up in the north (on Lebanon’s front), there are not enough soldiers to manage it,” Lapid warned.

French envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian and the five-nation group on Lebanon, which comprises the U.S., France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, support a presidential initiative by the National Moderation Bloc.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said in a televised interview that Le Drian has informed him, in a phone call Sunday, that he and the quintet support the initiative.

Israeli air strikes near Lebanon's eastern city of Baalbek killed one person on Monday, a security source said, in the second raid in the region since cross-border hostilities began after the Gaza war.

Since October 8, the day after the war broke out in the Gaza Strip, Hamas ally Hezbollah and its arch-foe Israel have exchanged near-daily fire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left open the prospect of a military operation in Lebanon to facilitate the return of Israelis displaced from northern Israel.

"They've left their homes because of fear that Hezbollah would perpetrate the massacres in the northern border with Lebanon that Hamas perpetrated in the border with Gaza,” Netanyahu said in an interview with U.S. news website Politico.