Free Republic

With most votes counted and the Likud victory all but confirmed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the first efforts toward cobbling together a coalition, placing calls to his most likely partners hours after the polls closed. The Likud party said in a statement on Wednesday morning that Netanyahu had phoned the Jewish Home’s Naftali Bennett, Yisrael Beytenu’s Avigdor Liberman, Kulanu’s Moshe Kahlon, Shas’s Aryeh Deri, and United Torah Judaism’s Yaakov Litzman. Based on the current count, a coalition between these parties would be 67 seats strong. Netanyahu said he hopes to form a coalition “within two to three weeks,” a...

[HERALD INTERVIEW]Polish minister says Warsaw troops will stay in Iraq Poland's top foreign affairs official says South Korea and his country share common goals in their mission to Iraq. Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said both countries, which maintain among the largest forces in the U.S.-led coalition, have a great responsibility to help ease tensions in the war-ravaged country. "Poland and Korea participate in a difficult mission in Iraq. Of course we have a lot of common problems to talk about," the minister said in an interview with The Korea Herald yesterday. "Both our nations took some special responsibility for the...