World powers meet today in a desperate bid to salvage international envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria to end 16 months of bloodshed and agree on a transition plan for the strife-hit country.
Ahead of the multi-nation talks in Geneva, a meeting in Russia between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov led Moscow to issue an upbeat outlook, saying a deal was likely.
But Washington took a more cautious line, warning of persistent differences between the US and Russian approaches and dampening hopes of progress needed to stop the conflict that according to rights monitors has left 15,800 people dead since March last year.
Annan had announced the Geneva meeting on Tuesday, inviting Clinton, Lavrov, and the foreign ministers of the three other permanent Security Council states Britain, China and France, as well as regional powers Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait and Iraq, but conspicuously leaving out Iran and Saudi Arabia.
He circulated a proposal on a "Syrian-led transition" that could help save his peace process that has been largely ignored by both the ruling regime and opposition since it came in force on April 12.
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Fighting has only intensified in recent weeks and rights monitors said more than 230 people - most of them civilians had been killed across the strategic Middle East country since Thursday.
But doubts grew over the fate of today's meeting as it drew nearer, over Russian opposition to Annan's proposal on the composition of an interim Syrian government.
Annan's draft, seen by AFP, sees power handed to an interim Syrian team without those "whose continued presence and participation would undermine the credibility of the transition and jeopardise stability and reconciliation".
The wording appears to imply - without saying so directly - that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would have to relinquish his grip on power for the idea to succeed.
Russia angrily rejected the suggestion, insisting that Assad's fate "must be decided within the framework of a Syrian dialogue by the Syrian people themselves," while Western powers warned there was no point meeting in Geneva if there was no prior agreement on the issue.