BEIRUT — Despite recent rebel setbacks in Syria's civil war, the main opposition bloc signaled a tough line Tuesday on attending possible peace talks with President Bashar Assad's regime.
Two senior members of the Syrian National Coalition said the group first wants ironclad guarantees of Assad's departure as part of any transition deal and more weapons for rebel fighters. The group's final position is to be hashed out in a three-day meeting of its General Assembly in Istanbul, Turkey, later this week.
Tuesday's comments highlighted the wide gaps between many in the Syrian opposition and the regime just weeks before the U.S. and Russia hope to bring the sides together at an international conference in Geneva.
Over the weekend, Assad also presented a hard line, challenging the idea of transition talks and saying he won't step down before elections are held. Hours after those comments, his troops launched an offensive against a rebel-held town in western Syria, the latest in a series of military gains by the regime.
"There are many obstacles facing the conference," Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria and lead organizer of the gathering, acknowledged Tuesday, after meeting with the Arab League chief in Cairo.
Much about the conference remains up in the air, including the date, the agenda, timetable and list of participants. Brahimi said the conference, initially envisioned for late May, should be held in June at the latest.
The goal is to launch talks between the regime and the opposition on a transitional government in Syria — an idea that was first adopted by the international community in Geneva a year ago but never got off the ground.
Earlier this month, the U.S. and Russia decided to give diplomacy another try, even though they have been backing opposite sides in the 26-month-old conflict that has killed an estimated 70,000 people. The joint effort was quickly overshadowed by disagreements, particularly over Russian shipments of advanced missiles to Assad, deemed ill-timed and unhelpful by the U.S.
The latest signals from Assad and his Russian allies have left the Syrian National Coalition skeptical about the international conference, said Louay Safi, a member of the group's decision-making political office.
"We are serious about having negotiations that would lead to a political solution," Safi said. "But if Assad is not serious, we are not going there (to the conference) for a photo op."
One of the main sticking points is Assad's fate. At Russia's insistence, a compromise at last year's Geneva conference left open the door to Assad being part of a transitional government — a non-starter for the SNC.
"We have been very clear that any transitional period must start with the departure of Assad and the heads of the security services," Khalid Saleh, the spokesman of the SNC, said Tuesday.
He said the Syrian opposition wants guarantees before the start of transition talks that Assad will go. Since the revival of the Geneva plan, the U.S. has remained vague, saying Assad can't be part of a transition, but stopping short of making that a condition for negotiations, as the SNC demands.