UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Damascus Monday to seek support for a Syria peace conference.

UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Damascus Monday to seek support for a Syria peace conference.

Brahimi, who travelled overland to the Syrian capital after flying in to Beirut airport from Tehran, arrived at the Sheraton hotel accompanied by Syrian deputy foreign minister Faisal Moqdad.

Brahimi is expected to meet the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a number of local politicians and security officials.

The internal opposition is set to hand Brahimi the names of its representatives to Geneva II conference.

The envoy has been on a regional tour, taking in Turkey but not Saudi Arabia which opposes the peace initiative and takes a hard line against the Syrian government.

It is his first visit to Syria since last December.

In Tehran, Brahimi said it was "necessary" for Iran to take part in the Geneva conference slated for next month and aimed at ending Syria's two-and-a-half-year crisis.

In the latest blow, 19 Extremist groups fighting the Syrian government issued a statement Sunday saying the Geneva conference "is not, nor will it ever be our people's choice or our revolution's demand."

"We consider it just another part of the conspiracy to throw our revolution off track and to abort it," said the statement read out by Suqur al-Sham brigade chief Ahmad Eissa al-Sheikh in a video posted online.

The statement went on to say that anyone who attends such talks would be committing "treason" and "would have to answer for it before our courts," implying they could face execution.

Russia on Monday issued a stinging rebuke to the rebels.

"It is outrageous that some of these extremist, terrorist organizations fighting government forces in Syria are starting to make threats," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in televised comments.