Britain has agreed to destroy part of
Syria's chemical weapons stockpile at a commercial facility, the British government said on Friday.
The industrial chemicals will be transported from Syria by ship to a port in Britain, the Foreign Office said in a statement.
Earlier this month, the U.S. and Britain suspended nonlethal military aid to the opposition in Syria, after Islamic militants captured warehouses that contained a cache of machine guns and ammunition intended for Idris' SMC.
The incident was an embarrassment to the Syrian opposition, which is struggling to maintain international support as extremists expand their hold across rebel-held territories.
Also Friday, the U.N.-Arab League's envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, met with U.S. and Russian officials to try to agree on which nations should be invited to Syria peace talks in Geneva next month.
Disputes over who should represent the Syrian opposition and government, and whether Iran, Saudi Arabia and other regional powers should be at the table, have blocked previous attempts to bring Syria's warring sides for peace talks.
Idris has said he will take part in the Geneva talks, but it is still unclear if any other rebel groups will attend. Assad's government has said it would take part in the talks.
In addition, Western diplomats are increasingly saying that President Bashar al-Assad keeping power is a better option for Syria than the country being ruled by Islamist militants, according to Russia's foreign minister.
Russia has been Assad's most important supporter during Syria's civil war. It says his removal from power must not be a precondition for holding peace talk However, the leader of one of the most powerful al-Qaida-linked groups in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, said in an interview broadcast late Thursday that his group will not acknowledge anything that comes out of the peace conference.
"Geneva (conference) is an attempt to resuscitate the regime by the international community," said the man purported to be Abu Mohammad al-Golani, the Nusra Front leader, said in his first-ever interview, broadcast in full late Wednesday on the Qatar-owned Al-Jazeera television.
Al-Golani said those who plan to participate in the Geneva conference do not represent the Syrian people. Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch urged Lebanon to rein in sectarian tensions that have been on the rise amid a spillover of the Syrian conflict.
On the Field:
The commander of Syria's main Western-backed rebel group has urged all opposition fighters to join ranks in the struggle against President Bashar Assad's forces, pledging to do everything he can to stave off rebel infighting.
In remarks broadcast by a pan-Arab satellite television Al-Arabiya, Gen. Salim Idris said all rebels in Syria who believe in the "goals of the revolution" are "our brothers."
Idris spoke after a meeting late Thursday in Istanbul with U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford.
His comments suggested he was trying to limit the damage from deadly infighting among moderate and extremist rebel factions ahead of a peace conference for Syria scheduled to be held in Switzerland in January.
The faction that Idris leads, the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army rebel umbrella group, has been dealt a severe blow by the rapid rise of Islamic extremist groups in Syria.
AP