Vienna talks: New elections to be held in Syria within 18 months

Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry have been “a great inspiration” in the “productive” Vienna meeting, Staffan de Mistura said.

The upshot was the agreement of a timetable for formal negotiations to begin between the government of Bashar al-Assad and its opposition by January 1 next year, with the view to holding elections within 18 months, The Wall Street Journal reports. Within six months, they would be required to create an “inclusive and non-sectarian” transitional government that would set a schedule for holding new, internationally supervised elections within 18 months.

Kerry acknowledged that participants also failed to agree on Assad’s role in the transition or his potential future role in the country’s government.

Agreement among the United States, Russian Federation and foreign ministers from the Middle East and Europe clearly gained impetus from their shared horror over Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

The announcement was dampened somewhat by the news out of Paris, which saw a string of coordinated terrorist attacks overnight that left more than 128 people dead. He said Syrians should instead determine the president’s fate through a democratic process: He told reporters Saturday: “We did not come here to impose our collective will on the Syrian people, exactly the opposite…”

“But the situation is such that he has become the magnet for the foreign fighters”, US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

Abdelbaset Sieda, a senior member of the main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, said that after all the violence in Syria since March 2011, “all parties are convinced that it is impossible for Assad to continue as long as there is a will to keep Syria united”.

Maleh was detained by the Syrian government several times for opposing the regime and expressing, through his writing, the urgency of a dramatic political change in Syria when Assad took power after the death of his father, Hafez al-Assad.

“A very big gap” remains between Western powers and Russian Federation over the best way of resolving the crisis in Syria, but there are signs of a willingness to compromise on all sides, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

Foreign ministers from more than a dozen nations held meeting in Vienna seeking to find a way to resolve the conflict in Syria.

“Syria is a sovereign country, Bashar al-Assad is a president elected by the people”, said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The United States also appears to have dropped its objection to the participation in negotiations of opposition groups, supported by the Saudis and others, that Washington does not deem “moderate” enough for support. While Russian Federation says it is bombing the Islamic State, the Obama administration has said most of its strikes are hitting Syrian opposition forces fighting against Assad.

The two countries have been close allies since Syria, then ruled by Assad’s father Hafez, sided with Tehran against the later executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

“They targeted the eastern and southern parts of the city”, Dani Qabbani, a media activist, said.

Witnesses said that the gunmen in the Paris attacks had blamed France’s military intervention in Syria against Daesh extremists.