Ammon News - Saturday's meeting will be the first time the two sides have come face to face since unrest began in March 2011.

Delegations from Syria's government and the main opposition are to face each other for the first time for talks, following two days of intense diplomacy by the UN mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi.

In a meeting scheduled to start on Saturday at 09:00 GMT in Geneva, the two sides will come together to try to broker a peace deal to end a civil war that has left at least 130,000 people and millions more displaced.

Brahimi spent two days meeting the groups separately and, late on Friday, said: "I think the two parties understand what is at stake. Their country is in very, very bad shape. And I think that the people who are here representing the Opposition and the Government understand that as well as I do, or better. It is their country after all.

"So the huge ambition of this process is to save Syria. No less than that."

On Friday, Syria's government threatened to leave Switzerland if "serious talks" did not begin by Saturday. The opposition, which agreed to the peace talks only under intense diplomatic pressure, had been reluctant to sit face-to-face with a government it insists must yield power.

But the government says it is there only to talk about fighting terrorism - the word it uses for its enemies - and that no one can force Assad to go.

Brahimi said the two parties were going to work Saturday and Sunday so neither would be leaving the conference.

Best hope

Direct negotiations are seen by many diplomats as the best hope for an eventual end to the war.
As the talks appeared to be on the verge of collapse, fighting raged on Friday in parts of Syria, including near Damascus, the capital.

Protesters in several Syrian towns demonstrated against the talks, saying Assad had shown with years of military strikes against his people that he favoured violence over negotiations.

But the two sides' willingness to meet Brahimi - even separately - gave some hope that negotiations might bear fruit. Brahimi himself has said both sides may bend on humanitarian corridors, prisoner exchanges and local ceasefires.

*Agencies