Clinton to hold talks on Syria with Russia FM, UN envoy

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and UN peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi Thursday as world leaders desperately seek an end to the conflict in Syria. Amid fears the 21-month conflict which has already claimed some 40,000 lives may take a gruesome new turn, the three diplomats were to hold crisis talks on the sidelines of an international meeting in Dublin. "Secretary Clinton has accepted an invitation by UN special envoy Brahimi for a trilateral meeting on Syria this afternoon with Mr Brahimi and Russian FM Lavrov," a senior State Department official said. The three-way talks come amid growing concern that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad could be preparing to use chemical weapons as it battles opposition rebels seeking to oust the long-time leader.  US officials hope there may be a new willingness by Moscow, a staunch ally in Damascus, to probe ways to bring more pressure to bear on Assad to step down. The United States has been calling for some time for Russia to use its leverage with Assad to try to open the way towards a political transition. Moscow has been a staunch ally of Assad and has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions aiming to sanction the regime. But it did initially sign onto a peace plan crafted by Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, until it wavered in the face of imposing punitive UN action if Syria refused to implement the accord. Clinton and Lavrov met first on Thursday morning for bilateral talks in which a US senior official said they both agreed to "listen to what the special envoy has to say.""They both have a lot of respect of his mission and want to be supportive of it," the State Department official said.  Clinton and Lavrov talked about how "extremely seriously we need to be in continuing to send messages about the red line and the unacceptability of the use of or loss of control of chemical weapons." Clinton on Wednesday renewed Washington's vow to find ways to provide fresh support for the Syrian opposition which has come together in a new body known as the Syrian National Coalition. "Now that there is a new opposition formed, we are going to be doing what we can to support that opposition," Clinton told reporters in Brussels, before flying to Ireland. Washington has so far provided humanitarian, non-lethal aid to the rebels, but refused to arm the opposition amid fears of pouring weapons into an already volatile region, where anti-US militant groups are springing up. Clinton also warned Damascus again that any use of chemical weapons against rebel forces was a clear red line that must not be crossed. "Our concerns are that an increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons or might lose control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within Syria," Clinton told reporters after a NATO meeting.But she again pressed the Assad regime to make "the decision to participate in a political transition, ending the violence against its own people. "We hope that they do so because we believe, as you know, that their fall is inevitable. It's just a question of how many people will die until that date occurs." Russian President Vladimir Putin met Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Monday on a trip focused on resolving sharp differences over the conflict. Last month, Erdogan said Russia held the key to the Syrian conflict, and that if Moscow took a "positive" stance in the Security Council it could push another key Damascus ally Iran to review its policies. It was unclear though Thursday whether there would be any change of position on the Russian side during the three-way talks. The Dublin talks will also come ahead of a key meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People in Marrakesh next week, which Clinton will attend. It is likely the United States will move towards recognising the Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people at the meeting, after France last month became the first Western nation to do so. Britain, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council followed suit, but the coalition has failed to win universal backing because of doubts about whether it is genuinely representative of all sectors of Syrian society.