Syria talks in Geneva postponed until end of February

UN-hosted negotiations on the Syrian conflict planned for 8 February in Geneva have been postponed until the end of that month, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday, despite the fact that the UN could not confirm it.

"The date of 8 February has been put back until the end of next month," Lavrov told a meeting with minor Syrian opposition representatives in Moscow to discuss peace talks in Kazakhstan that ended on Tuesday without a major breakthrough.

There was no confirmation from the United Nations on the latest plans for the next round of talks between the Syrian regime and opposition.

Lavrov also criticised the UN's "passivity" deeming it "unacceptable".

"The special envoy [for Syria Staffan de Mistura] is heading to New York next week. He is going to discuss this issue with the secretary general [Antonio Guterres] and we will have a clear picture when he gets back," a spokeswoman for de Mistura, Yara Sharif said in a news conference in Geneva on Friday regarding Lavrov's comments.

The main opposition groups stayed away from the Moscow meeting with Lavrov, as the Kremlin seeks to impose its influence as the key powerbroker in Syria on the back of its game-changing military support for leader Bashar al-Assad.

Representatives from armed opposition groups and Damascus were expected to hold their first face-to-face talks in Astana, but the rebels refused over regime truce violations and mediators were forced to shuttle between the two sides.

Lavrov added that Russia expected Syrians to work on the draft constitution via the Geneva talks. "It is necessary to focus on certain issues in Geneva like work on [the Syrian] constitution," he said in Moscow.

Lavrov also described a Russian proposal of a draft constitution to opposition groups as an attempt to find "common" points between the opposition and the regime. 

Key players Russia, Turkey and Iran backed the talks and the main result was an agreement by the three sides to try to shore up a shaky ceasefire on the ground in the war-torn country.

The latest peace initiative to halt fighting that has killed over 310,000 people since 2011 comes after the Syrian regime, with the help of Russian and Iranian firepower, dealt rebels a crushing blow by ousting the rebels from eastern Aleppo last month.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, estimates that more than 310,000  people have been killed in Syria since 2011.