Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday he would meet Syrian opposition leaders in Moscow next week to discuss the possibility of ending violence in the country.
"We will use this coming meeting with yet another Syrian opposition group to continue work to end violence and start Syrian dialogue between the government and all groups of the Syrian opposition as soon as possible," Lavrov said at a briefing with his Vietnamese counterpart Pham Binh Minh.

World powers agreed, at a meeting in Geneva on Saturday organized by international mediator Kofi Annan, that a transitional government should be set up in Syria to end the conflict there, but Annan failed to bridge differences between the West and Russia - backed by China - on whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must resign.

Western and some Arab states have been trying for months to increase pressure on Damascus, and trying to reach a compromise with Russia, which supports Assad, to allow tougher U.N. Security Council action and move towards a political transition.

Russia has used its veto in the Security Council to prevent sanctions being imposed on Syria and has hosted talks with Syrian opposition groups that operate in closer proximity to Assad than the opposition best known to the West and Arab powers.

While Western powers insisted Assad's exclusion from any new government was necessary, Lavrov said at the Geneva meeting that the plan did not imply at all that Assad should step down as there were no preconditions excluding any group from the proposed national unity government.

Different Syrian opposition groups, as well as the participants at the Geneva talks, have been interpreting Russia's position differently, Lavrov said.

"Unfortunately, some representatives of the Syrian opposition started saying the Geneva decision was not acceptable to them, while some of the participants of the Geneva meeting distorted the agreements we had come to," he said.

He said Russia's position on the agreement was clear and it did not mean to say more than is written down in the communique.

"Our position is honest, we are not trying to hint at anything more than what is written down in the text," he added.

Source: Reuters