U.S., Russia, U.N. envoy in talks on Syria

A rebel fighter carries his son after Friday prayers in the al-Fardos neighborhood of Aleppo on December 7, 2012. / ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images

MOSCOW Russian and U.S. diplomats are meeting Sunday with U.N. peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for more talks on the civil war in Syria, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that the Americans were wrong to see Moscow as softening its position.

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Russia agreed to take part in the talks in Geneva, he said, on the condition there would be no demand for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down.

"We are not conducting any negotiations on the fate of Assad," Lavrov said Sunday. "All attempts to portray things differently are unscrupulous, even for diplomats of those countries which are known to try to distort the facts in their favor."

Lavrov met last week with Brahimi and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Dublin. Afterward, Clinton said the United States and Russia were committed to trying again to get both sides in the Syrian conflict to talk about a political transition. Clinton stressed that the U.S. would continue to insist that Assad's departure be a key part of that transition.

Russia and the United States have argued bitterly over how to address the conflict, which began with peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 and escalated into a civil war. The U.S. has criticized Russia for shielding its closest ally in the Middle East, while Moscow has accused Washington of encouraging the rebels and being intent on regime change.

Russia's foreign minister said Sunday that after he agreed to a U.S. proposal to have his and Clinton's deputies "brainstorm" on Syria, the Americans began to suggest that Russia was softening its position.

"No such thing," Lavrov said. "We have not changed our position."

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Germany weighed in Sunday on the future of Assad's regime, with Federal Intelligence Service chief Gerhard Schindler saying it would not survive, although it was impossible to say how long it would hang on.

"Signs are increasing that the regime in Damascus is in its final phase," he was quoted as telling the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

[usunus]

NYT reports today of the potential danger of an Al Qaeda affiliated group of rebels taking over Syria in case of the departure of Bashar Assad.This should sober up the U.S and not let it join France and Britain in supporting the rebels blindly and targeting the ouster of the Assad regime.The " liberated " Libya itself is a potential time bomb with the Islamists threatening to gain ground.The U.S should not make the Libyan mistake in Syria.Hawks like Senator McCain completely ignore the dominance of the Islamist terrorist groups among the Syrian rebels and urge President Obama to plunge headlong into Syria.

[Jesus_to_ground_control]

Turmoil in Syria

"Weakening, I feel the dark force is. Yeesssssss." Yoda, Grand Master of the Jedi Order

[akvbme]

The people that are commenting about the NRA evidently doesn't have a clue what the organization stands for.

[Bleddyn71]

Yes a wet dream ... the NRA dreams of living in a low to mid intensity conflict with fully automatic weapons and escorting children from safehouse to safehouse.

Things in syria, as well as several other countries/regions, are just not to your liking then.