'Geneva II' Syria peace talks set for Dec 12: Report

The date was reported as the head of Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah, said his forces would continue to fight alongside the regime in Syria

A long-delayed peace conference on Syria's bloody conflict will be held on December 12, a Syrian newspaper said today, as mortar shells and two blasts killed three in Damascus.

The date was reported as the head of Lebanon's Shiite group Hezbollah, which backs Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, said his forces would continue to fight alongside the regime in Syria.

Syrian daily Al-Watan, citing diplomats in Paris, said US Secretary of State John Kerry had told his French counterpart Laurent Fabius that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would announce the date on November 25.

The newspaper said a Syrian government source declined to confirm the report, while an adviser to the president of the opposition National Coalition also said a date for talks had not been finalised.

"The organisers of Geneva II want the conference to be held before the end of the year," Munzer Aqbiq told AFP.

The international community has been trying for months to convene a peace conference dubbed "Geneva II", but proposed dates have come and gone with no progress.

The regime has said it is willing to attend, but that President Bashar al-Assad's departure from office will not be on the table.

The opposition has been divided over going to any such conference, but said this week it would attend under certain conditions, including Assad's departure and exclusion from the transition process.

Syria's Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi derided the opposition's conditions.

"Those who dream they're going to Geneva to be given the keys to Damascus are stupid people without any political weight who understand nothing about politics and live in cloud cuckoo land," Zohbi told the official SANA news agency.

"Those who announced their readiness to attend just a few days ago have done so at the behest of their masters," he said in allusion to Western governments, which back the rebels but have also pressed them hard to attend peace talks.

Assad discussed the talks in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin today, the Kremlin said.

Russia's president "positively assessed" the readiness of Assad's government to attend the talks, the Kremlin said.

Shortly afterwards, a Syrian official said a high-level Damascus team would travel to Moscow on Monday to meet Russian officials to "finalise the details of the peace conference due to be held in Geneva".