Kerry says Syria peace conference should be held soon

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US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for a peace conference on Syria "very soon" but said peace would not be possible without a transition government to replace President Bashar al-Assad.

"We believe it is urgent to set a day, to convene the conference and work toward a new Syria," Kerry told reporters after meeting United Nations special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi in London.

"We believe that President Assad has lost the legitimacy necessary to be a cohesive force that could bring people together," he said, adding: "there has to be a transition government in Syria to permit the possibility of peace".

On another note, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon named Dutch national Sigrid Kaag to lead the UN joint mission with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to eliminate Syria’s arsenal, sources said.

The sources told AFP that Ban Ki Moon has sent a letter in this regard to the UN Security Council, which is set to vote on the nomination next Wednesday.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning OPCW, along with the UN, have had a team of 60 experts and support staff in Syria since early October, tasked with destroying Syria’s chemical weapons.

The joint mission is set to include about a hundred staff members and be based in Damascus, with a second base in Cyprus, the sources said.

Kaag is a UN assistant secretary-general working at the UN Development Program and has served since 2007 as the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Jordan’s Amman.

Four of seven kidnapped aid workers freed:

Three of the six Red Cross aid workers abducted by gunmen in northwest Syria on Sunday have been released, along with a volunteer from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday.

"Good news! We confirm that the Syrian Red Crescent volunteer and three out of six ICRC colleagues have been released safe and sound," Robert Mardini, head of ICRC operations for the Near and Middle East, said in a tweet.

ICRC spokesman Ewan Watson said they were released in the Idlib region. The organisation was awaiting information on the remaining three.

On the field:

A car bomb killed at least 20 people on Monday in the northern Syrian town of Darkoush, close to the Turkish border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It said dozens of people were wounded by the explosion in the market of Darkoush, a small rebel-controlled town 2 km (1.5 miles) from the frontier, and some of them were taken into Turkey for treatment.

The British-based Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical and military sources, said 12 of the dead were identified by name and another eight badly charred bodies had been found.

The group says more than 115,000 people have been killed in Syria's 2-1/2 year conflict, which grew out of protests which erupted in March 2011 against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

REUTERS/LBCI