Sceptical that President Bashar al-Assad will fulfill a pledge to respect a UN-Arab League peace plan, Clinton said Washington will push the opposition "very hard" on their plans when she attends global talks in Istanbul on Sunday.
"They must come forward with a unified position, a vision, if you will, of the kind of Syria that they are working to build," Clinton said during a press conference with Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet.
The disparate opposition, which was meeting Tuesday in Istanbul, "must be able to clearly demonstrate a commitment to including all Syrians and protecting the rights of all Syrians," the chief US diplomat said.
She added that Washington -- which wants the opposition to represent Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druze, Turkmen and others -- will be pushing "them very hard to present such a vision in Istanbul" at the Friends of Syria talks.
The talks will draw top officials from dozens of Arab and Western countries.
Before hundreds of Syrian opponents meeting Tuesday in Istanbul, the main opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), an umbrella for many groups, unveiled a proposal highlighting human rights and respect for minorities.
But dissent broke out among participants from the start of the meeting, with human rights activist Haitham al-Maleh withdrawing from the talks and accusing the SNC of not respecting others and imposing its will.
The National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, which groups Arab nationalist parties, Kurds and socialists, shunned the gathering. Also absent were a small group of intellectuals, including the prominent Michel Kilo.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland observed that the Syrians were taking longer to come together than their counterparts in the Libyan opposition who overthrew Moamer Kadhafi last August.
Nuland added: "They're having to build trust. They're having to build common ground. So it's not surprising that it's taking time, but this is a process that we need to continue to support and buttress."
Clinton said before the first Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis last month that the SNC will demonstrate there is "an alternative" to the Assad regime, stopping well short of recognizing them as the sole opposition movement.
Clinton said Tuesday that Assad's reported acceptance of a peace plan by Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League envoy, must be matched by "immediate actions," such as a halt to violence, the release of prisoners and other steps.
But she warned of Assad's "history of overpromising and underdelivering."
OPPOSITION NAMES SNC AS SOLE REPRESENTATIVE
All but one of Syria's opposition factions agreed Tuesday to name the Syrian National Council as their representative, and called on President Bashar al-Assad to pull out tanks to show he was serious about peace.
"The conference decided that the SNC is the formal interlocutor and formal representative of the Syrian people," said a statement read out to journalists at the end of a two-day meeting in Istanbul by Syria's opposition groups.
The meeting had "agreed upon a statement... pledging for a restructuring of the SNC and decided to form a prepatory commission to write down a new law for the SNC," read the statement.
It was signed by all but one of the opposition factions.
The factions also called for Assad to prove he was serious about accepting a proposal crafted by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to end the bloodshed that activists say has killed almost 10,000 people in a year.
"We don't trust that regime," opposition leader Waid al-Buni told reporters.
"If he is really serious he must apply this initiative tomorrow. Tomorrow there must not be any tanks in the streets and the Syrian regime militaries should be withdrawn."
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