Syria's ambassador to Russia said insufficient funding and unspecified actions by militants fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad are hindering the government's compliance with a deal to abandon chemical weapons, the Interfax news agency reported on Monday.
"The main obstacles to Syria fulfilling its commitments (are) the lack of provision of the funding necessary to fulfill this task," Ambassador Riad Haddad was quoted as saying. "On top of that, armed groups are creating hindrances to satisfying the agreement's conditions."
Earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed his hopes that a conference to end the war in Syria can be convened in around a month's time.
"I am not able to announce at this time any date. Our target is mid-December," he said at a news conference with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite during a visit to Vilnius.
This as a prominent Syrian rebel leader has died from wounds suffered in an air raid on the city of Aleppo, in a blow to the armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, activists said on Monday.
Abdelqader Saleh, head of the Islamist al-Tawhid Brigades, which is backed by Qatar, died in a Turkish hospital where he had been taken. Saleh had been wounded on Thursday when Assad's forces raided a Tawhid meeting and killed another commander on the spot, opposition sources said.
Having lost several key rebel bases in the past few weeks, Saleh, who was in his 30s, had been working on regrouping fighters in Aleppo before he died. The city, situated 45 kms (28 miles) south of Turkey, was Syria's commercial hub and most populous city before the uprising against Assad erupted in 2011.
Taking advantage of infighting between rebel groups, Assad's forces, backed by Shi'ite militia from Iraq and the Lebanese party Hezbollah, have been making advances in the north and east of the contested city.
In an interview with the Opposition Orient Television from a battlefield in eastern Aleppo last week, Saleh said: "We will not let Iran and Hezbollah advance except on our dead bodies."
Saleh, a merchant from the town of Mareh in the countryside north of Aleppo, organised dozens of rebel brigades in the region under the Tawhid banner. A former army conscript, he was known by the nom de guerre Hajji Mareh.
Syrian delegation in Moscow:
A Syrian government delegation met Russian officials on Monday to discuss plans for an international peace conference on the conflict in the Middle East nation.
The United States, Russia and the United Nations are trying to convene the conference in Geneva to try to end the civil war in the Middle Eastern nation. Interfax news agency said a senior Iranian official was also due in Moscow for talks on Syria.
The Syrian delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, entered the Foreign Ministry building in Moscow, where Russian news agencies reported they were to meet Deputy Foreign Ministers Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennady Gatilov.
A Russian diplomatic source said the Syrians might meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday.
Belgium not a candidate to destroy Syria gas:
Belgium has ruled itself out as a candidate to destroy Syria's poison gas stockpile and says it would prefer the arsenal to be eradicated close to Syria itself.
Defense Minister Pieter De Crem said Monday that "the movement of those weapons is a tough enough task in itself" and crossed out Belgium as a possible destination.
After Albania refused to take on the task Friday, Belgium had been considered a possible candidate, if only because it has a long history of destroying the gas arsenal from World War I.
REUTERS/AP