Iraqi Leaders, Bar Sadr, Agree to Work on Political Roadmap

A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi speaks during the national dialogue meeting held under the auspices of President Barham Salih, including parliament speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi and other political leaders in the capital Baghdad on August 17, 2022. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office / AFP)
A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi speaks during the national dialogue meeting held under the auspices of President Barham Salih, including parliament speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi and other political leaders in the capital Baghdad on August 17, 2022. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office / AFP)
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Iraqi Leaders, Bar Sadr, Agree to Work on Political Roadmap

A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi speaks during the national dialogue meeting held under the auspices of President Barham Salih, including parliament speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi and other political leaders in the capital Baghdad on August 17, 2022. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office / AFP)
A handout picture released by Iraq's Prime Minister's Media Office shows PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi speaks during the national dialogue meeting held under the auspices of President Barham Salih, including parliament speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi and other political leaders in the capital Baghdad on August 17, 2022. (Iraqi Prime Minister’s Press Office / AFP)

Iraq's main political leaders -- but not firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- agreed Wednesday to work on a roadmap aimed at ending the country's political impasse, after talks called by the premier.

They also pledged to keep talking, and urged Sadr to join what Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi called the "national dialogue".

Ten months after a general election last October, war-scarred Iraq still has no government, new prime minister or new president, because of disagreement over forming a coalition.

Tensions have been rising since July between the two main Shiite factions, one led by Sadr, the other by the pro-Iran Coordination Framework. Attempts to mediate have so far proved fruitless.

Sadr wants parliament dissolved to pave the way for new elections, but the Coordination Framework wants to set conditions and demands a transitional government before new polls.

After Wednesday's talks, a statement from Kadhimi's office said the meeting resulted in "several points agreed upon".

These included a commitment to finding a solution through a continuing dialogue "to present a legal and constitutional roadmap to address the current crisis".

Early elections were not ruled out, with the statement saying that "resorting to the ballot box once again through early elections is not an unprecedented event in the history of democracies", but without explicitly calling for them.

The Coordination Framework was represented at Wednesday's talks by two former premiers, Haidar al-Abadi and Nouri al-Maliki.

Also present were Hadi al-Ameri and Faleh al-Fayyad, senior officials in the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) of former paramilitaries, now part of the national forces.

Maliki is a longtime foe of Sadr, the influential populist cleric whose bloc emerged from last October's elections as parliament's biggest, but still far short of a majority.

Sadr supporters have been staging a sit-in outside parliament in Baghdad's high security Green Zone for more than two weeks, and the Coordination Framework began a rival Baghdad protest on Friday.

President Barham Salih and parliamentary Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi also attended the talks, as did officials of the two main Kurdish parties and the UN envoy in Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert.

As the meeting got under way, a terse press release from the Sadr faction said simply that it was not taking part "in the national dialogue".

Announcing the talks on Tuesday, Kadhimi's office had said they aimed "to start a profound national dialogue and deliberation; to find solutions to the current political crisis".

Earlier Tuesday, Sadr had backtracked after previously urging his supporters to join a massive rally as the standoff appeared to be getting worse.

He said a "million-man demonstration" planned for Baghdad on Saturday was being postponed indefinitely.



Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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Villagers in Southern Lebanon Begin to Return Home as Israeli Army Withdraws Under Ceasefire Deal

Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Destroyed houses caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive, in the town of Kfar Kila, southern Lebanon, today, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Israeli forces withdrew Tuesday from border villages in southern Lebanon under a deadline spelled out in a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, but stayed in five strategic overlook locations inside Lebanon.

Top Lebanese leaders denounced the continued presence of the Israeli troops as an occupation and a violation of the deal, maintaining that Israel was required to make a full withdrawal by Tuesday. The troops' presence is also a sore point with the Hezbollah group, which has demanded action from the authorities.

Lebanese soldiers moved into the areas from which the Israeli troops withdrew and began clearing roadblocks set up by Israeli forces and checking for unexploded ordnance. They blocked the main road leading to villages, preventing anyone from entering while the military was looking for any explosives left behind.

Most of the villagers waited by the roadside for permission to go and check on their homes but scores pushed aside the roadblocks to march in. Elsewhere, the army allowed the residents to enter.

Many of their houses were demolished during the more than yearlong conflict or in the two months after November’s ceasefire agreement when Israeli forces were still occupying the area.

In the border village of Kfar Kila, people were stunned by the amount of destruction, with entire sections of houses wiped out. Some knelt on the ground and prayed in the village's main square.

“What I’m seeing is beyond belief. I am in a state of shock,” said Khodor Suleiman, a construction contractor, pointing to his destroyed home on a hilltop. “I am feeling a mixture of happiness and pain." said Suleiman, who had last been in Kfar Kila six months ago.

In Kfar Kila's main square, Lebanese troops deployed as a military bulldozer removed rubble from the street. As people gathered in the square, a young man ran in, screaming that he had found two men alive on the edge of the village.

An ambulance rushed to the distant area and then quickly drove away from the village, preventing anyone from looking inside. Residents said later the two young men were members of Hezbollah and had been hiding out inside a grocery shop for three months until they were found on Tuesday.

Abbas Fadallah from Kfar Kila said that his family’s house that was built 105 years ago was now a pile of debris. Fadallah said he is happy to return but sad because “many civilians were martyred.”

Kfar Kila’s mayor, Hassan Sheet, told The Associated Press that 90% of the village homes are completely destroyed while the remaining 10% are damaged. “There are no homes nor buildings standing,” he said, adding that rebuilding will start from scratch.

Also Tuesday, Ayman Jaber entered Mhaibib, a village perched on a hill close to the Israeli border that was leveled by a series of explosions on Oct. 16. The Israeli army had released a video showing blasts ripping through the village in the Marjayoun region.

The Associated Press interviewed Jaber and his family early November when Jaber said he worried Israel would again set up a permanent presence in southern Lebanon and that the home he had built over the past six years for himself, his wife and their two sons, would be gone.

That worry, at least, turned out to be well-founded. “Not a single house in the village is still standing,” Jaber said. “It is like an earthquake wiped out the village.”

“The situation breaks my heart,” Jaber said, as he stood inside the village’s cemetery. “They dug up the graves and opened the vaults. I don’t understand what security threat the dead posed to them.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army “will stay in a buffer zone in Lebanon in five control posts" to guard against any ceasefire violations by Hezbollah. He also said the army had erected new posts on the Israeli side of the border, and sent reinforcements there.

“We are determined to provide full security to every northern community,” Katz said.

However, Lebanon's three top officials — the country's president, prime minister and parliament speaker — in a joint statement said that Israel’s continued presence at the five locations was in violation of the ceasefire agreement. They called on the UN Security Council to take action to force a complete Israeli withdrawal.

“The continued Israeli presence in any inch of Lebanese territory is an occupation, with all the legal consequences that result from that according to international legitimacy,” the statement said.

The Israeli military presence was also criticized in a joint statement by the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and the head of the UN peacekeeping force in the country, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro.

The two, however, warned that this should not “overshadow the tangible progress that has been made” since the ceasefire agreement.

Hezbollah began firing rockets across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after a deadly Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September.

More than 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon and more than 1 million were displaced at the height of the conflict, more than 100,000 of whom have not been able to return home. On the Israeli side, dozens of people were killed and some 60,000 are displaced.

Hussein Fares left Kfar Kila in October 2023 for the southern city of Nabatiyeh. When the fighting intensified in September he moved with his family to the city of Sidon, where they were given a room in a school housing displaced people.

“I have been waiting for a year and a half to return,” said Fares who has a pickup truck and works as a laborer. He said he understands that the reconstruction process will take time.