Talks progress over rebel withdrawal from Syria's Homs

Talks on a rebel withdrawal from a handful of besieged neighbourhoods in Syria's Homs have entered their final phase, officials said today, as the army advanced around Damascus and Aleppo.
Talks to evacuate Homs, once dubbed "the capital of the revolution" against President Bashar al-Assad, are near completion, according to Governor Talal al-Barazi and rebel representative and negotiator Abul Harith al-Khalidi.
The negotiations continued a day after a ceasefire was put in place for the badly battered city, which has suffered some of Syria's worst and most persistent violence ever since the start of the revolt in March 2011.
A rebel pull-out from a handful of besieged, opposition-held districts in the heart of the city would mean Assad's regime has regained complete control of Homs.

"Talks to rid the city of arms and of armed men ... Are ongoing and we are near the end," said Barazi.
Abul Harith said the talks are being held in tandem with negotiations to free a group of pro-regime Iranian officers held by rebels in the northern city of Aleppo.

Such a deal, which would include guarantees of safe passage for the Homs fighters, "is a way to put pressure on the regime," he said, adding that all rebel groups, including the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front, had given him permission to negotiate the pullout.
"We want to stop this bloodbath," he said.

Earlier, Barazi had said Al-Nusra opposed the truce.
Homs is Syria's third city and is strategically located in the heart of the country.
Only a handful of neighbourhoods surrounding the historic and now destroyed Old City remain in rebel hands, after a series of massive army offensives starting in February 2012.
The vast majority of some 1,500 people still trapped in the Old City are fighters, but the rebel-held Waer neighbourhood is home to hundreds of thousands of civilians, many of them displaced from fallen rebel bastions.
Barazi said the deal "will be applied first in the Old City, then in Waer. The goal is to reach a peaceful solution that brings back security and government institutions.