Geneva, 25 January 2014: The first face-to-face meeting between Syria's government
and the opposition hoping to overthrow Bashar Assad started and ended after barely
a half-hour. After tense days spent avoiding each other and meeting separately
with a U.N. mediator, Assad's handpicked delegation and representatives of the Syrian
National Coalition gathered briefly in the same room, then emerged.
The two
sides were distant going into the meeting, with the Damascus delegation denying it
had accepted the premise of a transitional leadership, and the opposition saying it
would accept nothing less. Diplomats have said even getting them to the same table
can be considered an accomplishment three years into the uprising that left 130,000
people dead. Source: AP