Syrian deputy foreign minister Faysal Mekdad said on Sunday that the Assad government will allow women and children to leave besieged city of Homs immediately if rebels give them passage.
"I assure you that if the armed terrorists in Homs allow women and children to leave the Old City of Homs, we will allow them every access, not only that, we will provide them with shelter, medicines and all that is needed," he told a news conference after talks in Geneva with the Syrian opposition.
"We are ready to allow any humanitarian aid to enter into the city through the agreements and arrangements made with the U.N.," he said.
Mekdad also said that photos published last week by Britain's Guardian newspaper of some 11,000 corpses, purportedly tortured by Syrian government forces in custody, were "categorically" fabricated.
For his part, International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said that the Syrian government delegation at peace talks in Geneva had told him that authorities would allow women and children to leave the besieged old district of Homs city straight away.
"What we have been told by the government side is that women and children in the besieged area of the old city are welcome to leave immediately," Brahimi told a news conference after talks with government and opposition delegations.
The veteran diplomat said the opposition delegation, which has been calling on the government to release tens of thousands of detainees, had agreed to a government request to provide a list of detainees held by armed rebel groups.
Brahimi also said he would meet the two sides jointly on Monday, when they are expected to discuss opposition demands for the creation of a transitional governing body.
Earlier, Syria's opposing parties discussed aid and prisoner releases in talks aimed at building some kind of trust before tough political negotiations, but there was no sign of the early progress sought by an international mediator.
A U.N. spokeswoman said the two sides met for a second day at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva in the presence of international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who is trying to broker a peace deal to end almost three years of conflict.
Brahimi has said the two days of weekend talks will focus on what he has called confidence building measures, aimed at establishing a positive atmosphere before more difficult political talks on Monday.
He described Saturday's sessions - the first face-to-face meetings between Syria's warring foes - as a good beginning. However, he said little progress had been made over a deal to allow humanitarian aid into the center of Homs city, where rebels have been besieged by President Bashar al-Assad's forces for 18 months.
Government delegates arriving for the talks on Sunday said they were ready to discuss all issues presented by Brahimi but that it was a mistake to focus on individual or local issues.
"They proposed Homs. We say all Syrian cities are equal and as important," Information Minister Omran Zoabi told reporters.
Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Assad and member of the government delegation, echoed his reservations.
"The other side came here to discuss a small problem here or there. We came to discuss the future of Syria," she said. "We did not come here to bring relief to a region here or a region there. We came here to restore safety and security to our country."
REUTERS
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