Shortly after he renewed a dialogue offer with the Syrian regime, the head of the so-called Syrian National Council Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib asked to meet Vice President Farouq Sharaa.

Shortly after he renewed a dialogue offer with the Syrian regime, the head of the so-called Syrian National Council Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib asked to meet Vice President Farouq Sharaa.

Khatib told pan-Arab television channel Al-Jazeera on Monday that "the ball is now in the regime's court. They will either say yes or no."

He was following up on his surprise announcement last week that he was ready for talks with the Damascus regime -- subject to conditions, including the release of 160,000 detainees.

He later elaborated, telling Al-Arabiya news channel he was ready to meet Assad's deputy, Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa.
"Since the start of the crisis, Mr. Sharaa has seen that things are not going in the right direction," said Khatib.

"If the regime accepts the idea, I ask it to delegate Faruq al-Sharaa for us to hold discussions with him."

Khatib held talks in Munich over the weekend with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akhbar Salehi and Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister of Russia. He also met US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Syria's problems could not be solved by military means and called for "national understanding and free elections".

For its part, the United States backed Khatib’s move, saying that the regime in Damascus “should sit down to dialogue.”
If the Syrian regime is interested in peace "it should sit down and talk now with the Syrian Opposition Coalition, and we would strongly support al-Khatib in that call."

But she stressed to journalists in Washington that the “US position remained unchanged on bringing to account those, on both sides, who have committed atrocities.”