UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Wednesday he hoped China would play an active role in helping end the violence in Syria as he met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi for talks in Beijing.

UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Wednesday he hoped China would play an active role in helping end the violence in Syria as he met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi for talks in Beijing.

Both China and Russia have exercised their veto in the UN Security Council to block resolutions aimed at putting more pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Meeting him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last month, Yang reaffirmed this stance, saying that "political dialogue is the only correct way to tackle this issue".

Any political transition must be led by the people of Syria and not imposed by outside forces, he said.

Yang thanked Brahimi for his work on Wednesday and said he hoped their discussions -- their third in two months -- would promote "mutual understanding" and "the appropriate handling of the Syrian issue".

Yang also met the Syrian president's envoy in August and an opposition delegation the next month, both times stressing the need for dialogue.

He warned the opposition about outside forces directing any political transition, while he told the president's envoy that both sides in the conflict should work with international mediation efforts.

Brahimi is due to present new proposals for resolving the Syria conflict to the UN Security Council next month.

His two-day visit to China, which ends Wednesday, came after he met Russia's foreign minister in Moscow on Monday and described the conflict, now in its 19th month after a failed four-day truce last week, as going from bad to worse.