The Secretary General of the Syrian National Coalition said on Friday a delegation of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (NCSRO) is planning to visit Moscow on January 13-14, 2014 in a bid to hold talks with Russian officials.
Jamus said the delegation will be headed by NCSRO’s leader Ahmad Jarba who will be elected at a congress of Syrian opposition forces in Istanbul in early January.
Russia: Syria weapons deadline won't be met
A top Russian diplomat said the Dec. 31 deadline for removing the most toxic of Syria's chemical weapons won't be met.
According to a timeline agreed upon earlier, the most toxic chemicals were to have been removed by the end of the year.
But Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, had earlier indicated delays were possible due to heavy fighting.
On Friday, after a meeting of Russian, US and other experts on Syrian chemical weapons, the Foreign Ministry's disarmament department head, Mikhail Ulyanov, was quoted as telling the Interfax news agency "We of course won't succeed by Dec. 31."
He said it was unclear when the work might begin and that it probably wouldn't be announced in advance due to concerns of rebel interference.
On the field:
Syria's army ambushed Islamist fighters in the Qalamoun mountains north of the capital Damascus on Friday, leaving as many as 60 people dead, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The attack happened between the Christian town of Maaloula and the town of Yabroud, where government forces and rebels are fighting, said the Observatory, a British-based, pro-opposition monitoring group with sources across Syria.
Syria's civil war between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to topple him has killed more than 100,000 people since March 2011.
Syrian state television showed footage of dozens of bodies lying in a mountainous area, with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades next to them.
"There were about 400 of us including Saudis, Chechens and other nationalities," a badly wounded fighter who was lying on the ground told a state television reporter who was asking him about numbers and nationalities.
The fighter said he belonged to Liwa al-Islam, a Salafist jihadi group that is one of the biggest and best organized rebel units fighting to topple Assad.
The government television reporter said the army tracked the fighters overnight and ambushed them on their way to the town of Jayrud, 20 km (15 miles) southeast of Yabroud.
In the same regard, the Syrian TV reported that around 150 injured and killed armed men arrived to the Lebanese bordering town of Arsal after Syrian regime troops ambushed them in the towns of Qastal and Maaloula.
REUTERS/LBCI