Even Assad dismisses Russia's Syria dialogue
DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syrian President Bashar Assad dismissed negotiations with Western-backed opposition representatives, calling them "puppets" in an interview with a U.S. magazine published Monday ahead of talks set to begin in Moscow.
The comments came amid already low expectations that the four days of Moscow talks could lead to any breakthrough in the conflict. Even though most Western-backed Syrian opposition figures will not attend the talks, Assad's comments suggested he was still unwilling to consider the demands of those who have called on him to step down.
The four-year conflict has killed over 220,000 people and has turned nearly 4 million Syrians into refugees.
In the Foreign Affairs interview, Assad questioned if any dialogue with Syria's Western-backed opposition figures would be useful, saying that even armed groups did not see them as true representatives.
"If you want to talk about fruitful dialogue, it's going to be between the government and those rebels," said Assad, before dismissing the majority of armed rebels as jihadi militants with whom dialogue is impossible. "It cannot be an opposition if it's a puppet ... paid from the outside. It should be Syrian."
The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), is not attending Moscow talks.
Distrust of Russia runs deep in the anti-Assad camp, reports CBS News' George Baghdadi, and it only deepened when Moscow opted to send invitations to individuals in the opposition -- rather than the actual opposition groups -- to the Moscow talks. The move fed suspicions that the Kremlin was merely trying to further fracture Assad's already-divided opponents.
While the SNC is not attending the Moscow talks, Baghdadi says five of its members were there in a personal capacity, along with members of other opposition groups tolerated by the Damascus authorities, according to a diplomatic source.
The list of those who declined to attend, however, includes the bulk of the anti-Assad factions.
Mouaz al-Khatib, a former SNC president and a longtime proponent of peace talks, turned down his invitation, as did members of the Damascus-based opposition party known as Building the Syrian State. That party's leader has been jailed since November on charges that include weakening national sentiment and weakening the morale of the nation.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Syria, activists said fighters seized a military base near the southern city of Sheikh Miskeen, and militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), were reportedly forced largely out of the symbolic northern border town of Kobani.
Ahmad al-Masalmeh, an opposition activist in the nearby city of Daraa, said Western-backed rebels and Syria's al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, captured the Brigade 82 base Sunday night.
The fighters seized weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, he said.
The advance strengthens the rebels' grip on Sheikh Miskeen, an important southern transportation hub.
Meanwhile, activists and a Kurdish official in the north said ISIS had nearly been pushed out of Kobani, marking a major symbolic victory both for the Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and senior Kurdish official Idriss Nassan said the Islamic State group had been nearly expelled, with some sporadic fighting on the eastern edges of the city near Turkey.
"The Islamic State is on the verge of defeat," said Nassan, speaking from Turkey near the Syrian border. "Their defenses have collapsed and its fighters have fled."
In September, ISIS fighters began capturing some 300 Kurdish villages near Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying nearly half of it. Tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into Turkey.
By October, ISIS control of Kobani was so widespread that it even made a propaganda video from the town featuring a captive British photojournalist, John Cantlie, to convey its message that ISIS fighters had pushed deep inside despite U.S.-led airstrikes.
The town, whose capture would have given the jihadi group control of a border crossing with Turkey and open direct lines between its positions along the border, quickly became a centerpiece of the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared it would be "morally very difficult" not to help Kobani.
In Damascus, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory said seven people were killed overnight after rebels in surrounding towns fired the heaviest barrage of rockets at the city in months. State-run media said the rocket fire killed three people. Conflicting tolls are routine in the aftermath of attacks.
Senior rebel commander Zahran Alloush vowed Saturday to fire "hundreds of rockets" at Damascus after government shelling on a nearby rebel-held area killed 35 people Friday.