Members of Syria's largest opposition group met Turkey's foreign minister in Istanbul on Thursday, three weeks ahead of an international peace conference aimed at finding a solution to the crisis that has gripped Syria for nearly three years.
The conference, known as Geneva II, will be the first time representatives from the Syrian regime and opposition forces sit down together since the start of the conflict.
Both the president of the Syrian National Coalition and the Turkish Foreign Minister drew attention to the ongoing attacks on the northern city of Aleppo, which has come under heavy bombardment from Assad's forces.
"Unfortunately the international community is not showing the necessary reaction," said Ahmet Davutoglu.
"The fact that these inhumane attacks are going on, shows that the Syrian regime has interpreted (our) gestures of good will incorrectly," the Turkish Foreign Minister added.
The head of the SNC, Ahmed Jarba, emphasized that the opposition was "engaged in political negotiations" with both Arab and international ministers.
Aleppo, Syria's largest city, has been a major front in the country's civil war since rebels launched an offensive there in mid-2012.
The city has been heavily damaged since then in fighting that has left it divided into rebel- and government-controlled areas.
More than 130,000 people have been killed so far in the war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
One third of Syria's entire pre-war population of 23 million (m) people has been displaced because of the fighting.
The goal of Geneva II, scheduled to start January 22, will be to achieve a political solution to the conflict through a comprehensive agreement between the government and the opposition for a transitional government to be put in place.
About 30 nations are invited to a day of speech making planned in the Swiss city of Montreux.
This as a cargo ship is being outfitted in Virginia with sophisticated technology capable of destroying Syria's chemical weapons.
The 648-foot MV Cape Ray is undergoing work in a Portsmouth shipyard before sea trials and its expected voyage to the Mediterranean. The vessel in the Maritime Administration's ready reserve is rolling out the gangplank Thursday for media visits.
A key shipboard addition is a high-tech system that can neutralize lethal chemical weapons such as nerve gas with water and bleaching compounds. It could treat more than two dozen metric tons of chemicals daily in international waters.
The confirmed use of chemical weapons last August in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, killed 1,400 people, according to the U.S. government. That led to a U.S.-Russian agreement for eliminating Syria's chemical weapons.
On the field:
Sources told LBCI on Thursday that groups linked to the radical al-Nusra Front and to the Syrian opposition gathered yesterday in the vicinity of al-Nemat and al-Oyoun border towns in order to launch an offensive against Syria's Jousi and Qusayr regions.
"The offensive was aimed to ease military pressure imposed by the Syrian army and Hezbollah on the region of Qalamoun," the sources said.
The same sources noted that the Syrian army attacked the armed groups before launching their offensive, adding that clashes were reported on Wednesday until 10 pm.
AP/LBCI