A joint team of Syria's political and armed opposition will meet the government next month for talks seeking a political solution to nearly five years of conflict, the chairman of a Saudi-hosted opposition conference says.
More than 100 members of Syria's opposition parties and rebel fighting groups agreed at the end of two days of talks in Riyadh to work together to prepare for peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad's government.
But the final hours of the meeting, which excluded Islamic State and Nusra Front fighters as well as the main Kurdish force controlling large parts of northern Syria, were overshadowed by protest from the powerful insurgent group Ahrar al-Sham.
In a statement, it said it had withdrawn from the Riyadh meeting, objecting to what it said was a prominent role given to the mainly Damascus-based political opposition group, the National Co-ordination Body for Democratic Change, which it said was closer to Assad than to the opposition.
It also said rebel fighters had been under-represented at the talks and their voices largely ignored. However a copy of the final statement, seen by Reuters, had been signed by the Ahrar al-Sham delegate.
Nevertheless, its withdrawal - however brief - highlighted enduring rifts among Assad's enemies which have bedevilled Western and Gulf Arab efforts to rally enough political and military pressure on the president to force him to step down.
Abdulaziz al-Sager, a Saudi academic who chaired the Riyadh talks, said the opposition would meet government officials in the first 10 days of January, the first such talks in two years aimed at ending a bloody civil war which has drawn in forces from the US, Russia, Europe and the Arab world.
"There will be a meeting decided by (United Nations envoy Staffan) de Mistura in January. A meeting between the opposition and the Syrian regime to go to a transitional period," he said, in comments translated at a news conference on Friday.
"This will take place in the first 10 days of January."
A statement at the end of the two-day conference said Assad should leave power at the start of a transitional period, and called for an all-inclusive, democratic civic state. It also committed to preserving state institutions.
The opposition was willing to enter talks with Syrian government representatives and to accept a UN-supervised ceasefire, the statement said.
The meeting came amid escalating conflict in Syria, pitting the army and allied militias including Lebanese Hezbollah fighters backed by Iran and Russia against competing rebel and jihadi fighters, who include Arabs and Kurds.
The Riyadh meeting called on the United Nations to pressure the Syrian government to make a series of confidence-building moves before peace talks start, including suspending death sentences against opponents, releasing prisoners and lifting sieges.
Monzer Akbik, a member of the National Coalition opposition group, said the conference agreed to set up a 32-member secretariat to oversee and supervise peace talks. The statement said that body would select the negotiating team.
Participants also committed to a political system which "represents all sectors of the Syrian people", and would not discriminate on religious or sectarian grounds - in a gesture towards minority Alawite, Christian and Kurdish populations.
US Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the declaration. "While this important step forward brings us closer to starting negotiations between the Syrian parties, we recognise the difficult work ahead," he said.
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