UN special envoy to Syria visits Moscow

This was the outcome of discussions between UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Monday.

Both Lavrov and Brahimi expressed regret that Brahimi's recent initiative to broker the truce in Syria failed to work. The proposal was for all fighting sides to cease fire for 4 days during the Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday.

Brahimi insisted that he would continue to co-operate with parties inside and outside of Syria. He said Syrians themselves should undertake the process of reforms in their country.

The Special envoy will also visit China later this week before going back to the Security Council in November with new proposals on how to bring the government and the opposition in Syria to a negotiating table.

Russia supports the work of Lakhdar Brahimi towards ending the violence in Syria. On its part, Moscow continues holding talks with both the government and the opposition there. Moscow says that Damascus supports the principles of the Geneva communique and the job now is to convince the opposition to follow suit.