SYRIAN peace talks will begin no later than Monday, a spokeswoman for United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura said yesterday.

Jessy Chahine added that the participants would be the same as those invited to a proposed first round of negotiations last month that never got off the ground.

The Saudi-based High Negotiations Committee (HNC), an alliance of various fundamentalist and sectarian forces, refused to enter negotiations until President Bashar al-Assad’s government called a unilateral ceasefire.

They left Geneva on February 3 after suffering a major defeat on the battlefield to the Syrian army and the Kurdish YPG militia.

Saudi Arabia and its fellow US ally Turkey had also objected to the inclusion of the YPG’s parent Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the talks, claiming it is a terrorist group allied to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

But with the “cessation of hostilities” brokered by Russia and the US largely holding for more than a week, Syrian presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said on Monday evening that Syria’s independence and territorial integrity were non-negotiable.

US Vice-President Joe Biden, on a visit to Dubai, said: “We have to keep trying to reach a political settlement in Syria.”

One person was killed in the southern Turkish town of Kilis yesterday when three rockets were fired from northern Syria.

It was unclear who had fired the rockets, but last week Russia accused the Turkish-backed, al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front of firing mortars across the border to sabotage the fragile truce.