World powers meet Saturday in a desperate bid to salvage international envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan for Syria to end 16 months of bloodshed and agree on a transition plan for the strife-hit country.
Ahead of the multi-nation talks in Geneva, a meeting in Russia between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov led Moscow to issue an upbeat outlook, saying a deal was likely.
But Washington took a more cautious line, warning of persistent differences between the US and Russian approaches and dampening hopes of progress needed to stop the conflict that according to rights monitors has left 15,800 people dead since March last year.
Annan had announced the Geneva meeting on Tuesday, inviting Clinton, Lavrov, and the foreign ministers of the three other permanent Security Council states Britain, China and France, as well as regional powers Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait and Iraq, but conspicuously leaving out Iran and Saudi Arabia.
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