Syria’s main opposition group agrees to join Geneva peace talks

Syria's main opposition group has agreed to travel to Geneva to join UN peace talks aimed at ending the country’s five-year war, but insisted that it wanted to discuss humanitarian issues before engaging in political negotiations.

The High Negotiations Committee – an opposition platform created in Saudi Arabia last month – had earlier said that it would only join the peace talks if Syrian government forces ended their air strikes and blockades.

Opponents of President Bashar al-Assad have warned that they are facing a Russian-backed military onslaught, with hundreds of civilians reported to be fleeing as the Syrian army and allied militia attempted to capture a suburb of Damascus and finish off rebels defending it.

"The HNC will go to Geneva tomorrow to discuss these humanitarian issues which will pave the way into the political process of negotiations," spokesman Salim al-Muslat told the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath.

The HNC said it had drawn up a list of 3,000 Syrian women and children in government prisons who should be released.

U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura had already met the Syrian government’s delegation in the Swiss city on Friday. The so-called proximity talks are expected to last for six months, with delegations sitting in separate rooms and UN officials shuttling between them.

However, another major force, the Kurds who control much of northeast Syria and have proven one of the few groups capable of winning territory from Islamic State, were excluded from the talks after Turkey demanded they be kept away.

The Kurds say their absence means the talks are doomed to fail.

De Mistura said he expected to meet the HNC’s delegation on Sunday.

"They’ve raised an important point of their concern, they would like to see a gesture from the government authorities regarding some kind of improvement for the people of Syria during the talks, for instance release of prisoners, or some lifting of sieges," de Mistura said. However, he added that this was a human rights issues and “not even an issue to negotiate”, and had strongly suggested the best way to get such measures implemented would be to start negotiating in Geneva, by proxy or directly.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had made a major push to get the HNC delegation to Geneva, and the group said that he had personally contacted it by phone to urge it to attend.

"Secretary Kerry has been in touch with all of his counterparts, including this morning with [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergei Lavrov ... and with others, trying to find a way, a formula, in which we can urge the delegation or some version of the delegation to show up here," a senior U.S. official said. The immediate priorities of the talks are a broad ceasefire, humanitarian aid deliveries and halting the threat posed by so-called Islamic State.

However, the ultimate aim is a peace settlement that includes a transitional period ending with elections, in line with a UN Security Council resolution approved last month.

The last talks aimed at ending the conflict broke down in February 2014 after only two rounds, with the UN blaming the Syrian government for refusing to discuss an opposition demand for Assad to step down.

Despite little sign of a change in that stance, the rise of the IS militant group prompted the US and Russia to step up their efforts to get the warring parties back to the negotiating table.

In a separate development on Friday, the Dutch government announced it was planning to extend air strikes against IS militants from Iraq to Syria.

Defence Minister Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaer said attacking the IS group in Syria would lead to "more progress".