Syria opposition groups hold talks in Qatar

On Sunday, hundreds of Syrian opposition leaders began a four-day conference in the Qatari capital Doha, with the aim of reorganising their ranks and creating a unified political and military anti-government front.

The meeting could reshape the Syrian National Council, the main opposition, into a possible government in exile, but differences are already apparent.

Rebel forces in Syria have criticised the SNC as out of touch, and the opposition is also split ideologically.

The talks come amid continuing violence in Syria, with reports of an explosion on Sunday near a hotel in Damascus.

Also on Sunday, opposition activists said that rebels had seized a major oilfield in the eastern Deir Ezzor province.

It is holding four days of intensive internal meetings aimed at overhauling its structures completely, our correspondent says, bringing in new, young elements closer to events on the ground, and producing a new leadership.

It is then scheduled to hold talks on Thursday with the Syrian National Initiative, a group of influential and respected opposition figures who are proposing the creation of a unified leadership body that would later produce a government in exile, possibly as early as next month.

Respected dissident Riad Seif is apparently being suggested by the US as the head of the new government in exile.

However, Seif told the AFP news agency he had no plans to be leader.

"I shall not be a candidate to lead a government in exile... I am 66 and have health problems," he said.

Seif said he does believe an alternative to the government of President Bashar al-Assad is "dearly needed".

However, the SNC has been critical of the reduced representation it would have in Seif's planned new leadership group.

Seif was among more than 20 opposition leaders who had gathered in Jordan on Thursday to hammer out proposals for the new leadership.

The participants there issued a statement to quell fears that they were planning to negotiate with President Assad.

Meanwhile, Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, has called for world powers to issue a UN security council resolution based on a deal reached in June, in a bid to set up a transitional government and end the bloodshed in that country.

Brahimi's initiative came after talks with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Sunday.

Brahimi wants a UN Security Council to formalise an earlier declaration adopted in Geneva, which called for a transitional administration but did not specify what role, if any, Assad would play in it.

"It is important that the Geneva Declaration be turned into a resolution from the security council to gain the power to enable it to become an applicable political project," Brahimi said after a meeting between him, Lavrov and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby.