Western-backed opposition groups opened a three-day meeting in Istanbul yesterday to discuss a Russian initiative to hold talks in Moscow on a resolution to Syria’s civil war.

The Syrian National Coalition is also expected to elect a new president during its closed-door proceedings.

Russia is in a big push to try to bring the Syrian government and the opposition together for talks to end a war that has killed more than 200,000 people.

Moscow’s diplomats have been shuttling between the sides in recent weeks to sound out their willingness to attend talks that the Kremlin has said it hopes to convene after January 20.

The coalition has not ruled out participation but has so far insisted that any negotiated settlement be based on the so-called Geneva platform.

This states that there should be a political transition toward democracy through the formation of a transitional governing body with full executive powers.

Bashar al-Assad’s government has said that it is ready to attend “preliminary” talks as a step towards a conference in Syria itself.

Russia wants the first stage of talks to include members of both the government-tolerated internal opposition and opposition groups based abroad, including the coalition.

In the next stage, they would be joined by Syrian government representatives.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura continues his efforts to decrease the level of carnage in Syria through a plan that calls for “freezing the conflict” in the northern city of Aleppo as a building block for a wider solution to the war.