REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, GENEVA - Syria's first peace talks faltered before they began on Friday, with opponents of President Bashar al-Assad refusing to meet his delegation unless it first signs up to a protocol calling for a transitional government.

Plans were ditched at the last minute for the two sides to sit down to talk face to face for the first time. Instead, they would each meet separately with a UN mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.

The closed-door discussions were due to begin on Friday, two days after a formal opening conference was held in a poisonous atmosphere, with both sides and their global backers making uncompromising public speeches. Any direct meeting appears unlikely for now.

The opposition says it has come to discuss a transition that will remove Assad from power. The government says it is there only to talk about fighting terrorism - the word it uses for its enemies - and no one can force Assad to go. Opposition delegates decided they would not meet the government delegation unless it endorsed "Geneva 1", a 2012 protocol that calls for a political transition.

"We have explicitly demanded a written commitment from the regime delegation to accept Geneva 1. Otherwise there will be no direct negotiations," opposition delegate Haitham al-Maleh told Reuters.

A UN spokeswoman confirmed Brahimi would meet the delegates separately: "There are no Syrian-Syrian talks at the moment," said Alessandra Vellucci. "I cannot tell you anything about what will happen in the next few days."

Even before the announcement that the direct talks were canceled, the outlook was dim.

"The objective is for the first round of talks to last until next Friday, but expectations are so low we'll see how things develop day by day," a Western diplomat said. "Every day that they talk is a little step forward."

Brahimi has indicated that his aim is to start by seeking practical steps, like local ceasefires, prisoner releases and access for international aid deliveries, before embarking on the tougher political negotiations.

Syria's civil war has already killed at least 130,000 people, driven up to a third of the country's 22 million people from their homes and made half dependent on aid, including hundreds of thousands cut off by fighting.

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