BEIRUT: Syrian opposition leader Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib urged President Bashar Assad’s government Monday to start talks for its departure from power and save the country from greater ruin after almost two years of bloodshed.

Seeking to step up pressure on Assad to respond to his offer of talks – which dismayed some in his own opposition coalition, Khatib said he would be ready to meet the president’s deputy.

“I ask the regime to send Farouq al-Sharaa – if it accepts the idea – and we can sit with him,” he said, referring to Syria’s vice president who has implicitly distanced himself from Assad’s crackdown on mass unrest that became an armed revolt.

Speaking after meeting senior Russian, U.S. and Iranian officials, Khatib said none of them had an answer to the 22-month-old crisis and Syrians must solve it themselves.

“The issue is now in the state’s court ... to accept negotiations for departure, with fewer losses,” the Syrian National Coalition leader told Al-Arabiya television.

The moderate Islamist preacher announced last week he was prepared to talk to Assad’s representatives. Although he set several conditions, the move broke a taboo on opposition contacts with Damascus and angered many in its ranks who insist on Assad’s departure as a precondition for negotiation.

Khatib said it was not “treachery” to seek dialogue to end a conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed, 700,000 have been driven from their country and millions more are homeless and hungry.

“The regime must take a clear stand [on dialogue] and we say we will extend our hand for the interest of people and to help the regime leave peacefully,” he said in separate comments to Al-Jazeera television.

Assad announced last month what he said were plans for reconciliation talks to end the violence but – in a speech described by U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as narrow and uncompromising – he said there would be no dialogue with people he called traitors or “puppets made by the West.”

The violence has divided major powers, with Russia and China blocking U.N. Security Council draft resolutions backed by the United States, European Union and Sunni Gulf Arab states that could have led to U.N. sanctions isolating Assad. Shiite Iran has remained his strongest regional supporter.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that Syria’s crisis could not be solved by military means and he called for a national accord leading to elections.

“War is not the solution ... A government that rules through war – its work will be very difficult. A sectarian war should not be launched in Syria,” he told Al-Mayadeen television.

“We believe that [deciding] whoever stays or goes is the right of the Syrian people. How can we interfere in that? We must strive to achieve national understanding, and free elections.”

Khatib met Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi at a security conference in Germany at the weekend as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. “Iran’s stance is unacceptable and I mentioned to the foreign minister that we are very angry with Iran’s support for the regime,” Khatib said Monday.

He said he asked Salehi to pass on his offer of negotiations – based on the acceptance of the Assad government’s departure – to Damascus. The two men also discussed the need to prevent Syria’s crisis spreading into a regional conflict between Sunni and Shiites, he added.

“We will find a solution, there are many keys. If the regime wants to solve [the crisis], it can take part in it. If it wants to get out and get the people out of this crisis, we will all work together for the interest of the people and the departure of the regime.”

One proposal under discussion was the formation of a transitional government, Khatib said, without specifying how he thought that could come about. World powers agreed a similar formula seven months ago but then disagreed over whether that could allow Assad to stay on as head of state.

Rebels and activists say that Iran and Hezbollah have sent fighters to reinforce Assad’s army – an accusation that both deny.

“The army of Syria is big enough, they do not need fighters from outside,” Iran’s Salehi said in Berlin. “We are giving them economic support, we are sending gasoline, we are sending wheat. We are trying to send electricity to them through Iraq; we have not been successful.”

Another Iranian official, speaking in Damascus after talks with Assad, said that Israel would regret an airstrike against Syria last week, without spelling out whether Iran or its ally planned a military response.

“They will regret this recent aggression,” said Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. – Reuters, AP