International peace talks on the Syria conflict could take place next month, a top Syrian official says, claiming the long-awaited conference was closer than ever to taking place.
Asked at a press conference in Moscow if the talks have been pushed back to late November or early December, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said on Thursday they could take place on "November 23-24".
Russia and Western nations led by the US have been pushing the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad to meet to try to hammer out a negotiated solution to the two-and-half year-old conflict, which has killed about 115,000 people.
The conference, dubbed Geneva-2, was first mooted by the US and Russia in May but has been repeatedly put off.
"We are closer than ever to holding the Geneva-2," Jamil told reporters after talks at the Russian foreign ministry, but added that the timeframe for the conference was "hypothetical".
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He said there was "no alternative" to the peace conference.
"Today no aspect of the Syrian crisis can be solved without it," he said in remarks translated from Arabic into Russian, adding the talks had to put an end to "foreign interference" in the conflict.
"This will lead to the launch of a political process and cessation of violence.
"We cannot say 'open sesame' so that the political process would immediately start."
However, the head of the Syrian National Council, the largest member of the opposition National Coalition, said at the weekend his group would not attend the talks.
Jamil said the group's stance would not affect the plans for the conference.
"The refusal of the Syrian National Coalition to participate in the Geneva-2 will not influence the conference's timeframe and format," he was quoted as saying by the state RIA Novosti news agency. "They are likely to reconsider."
Meanwhile, fighting between the Syrian army and rebels at a prison in the northern city of Aleppo eased on Thursday, a day after the insurgents assaulted the facility, activists said.
The mostly jihadist rebel forces launched an attack on the regime-controlled prison on Wednesday night, in the heaviest fighting for the jail in months, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The military responded to the assault by firing a barrage of shells in the area around the prison.
After midnight, "the intensity of the fighting decreased between the army and members of the al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front and another Islamist faction Ahrar al-Sham," it said in a statement.
The Observatory, a Britain-based group that relies on a network of activists and other sources in war-torn Syria for its reports, was unable to say if the army managed to repel the insurgents.
The jail, located on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, the commercial capital of Syria before a bloody uprising erupted in March 2011, has been besieged by rebels since April.
Television channel Sky News Arabia said on Thursday it had lost contact with its crew on assignment in Aleppo.
The Abu Dhabi-based channel said in a statement that reporter Ishak Moctar, a Mauritanian national, Lebanese cameraman Samir Kassab, and a Syrian driver it did not name at his family's request have been missing since Tuesday.
It appealed to "all concerned parties" to help it locate its team and support "any effort ensuring their safe return".
