Syria conflict: Assad warns Israel amid rare hopes for diplomacy Welcome to Middle East Live. Here's a roundup of the weekend's developments: Syria President Bashar al-Assad has warned Israel that Syria is "capable of repelling any aggression" against his country in his first remarks since Israeli jet hit targets inside Syria last Wednesday. He said the attacks showed that Israel was collaborating with the "hostile foreign powers ... to destabilise and weaken Syria," according to the state news agency. Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak suggested the air raids showed Israel was serious about preventing the flow of heavy weapons into Lebanon. He said: "When we say something we mean it ... we don't think it should be allowable to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon." The foreign ministers from Russia and Iran, the Assad regime's closest international supporters, met the Syrian opposition leader, Moaz al-Khatib, in a rare sign of diplomatic progress. The talks at a Munich security conference came after Khatib's offer to hold preliminary talks with the regime, conditional upon the release of political prisoners, the discussions at a global security conference in Munich raised hopes that a way could be found around the deadlock in the UN security council. The Russian and Iranian foreign ministers, and US vice-president Joe Biden, portrayed Khatib's new willingness to talk with the Assad regime as a major step towards resolving the two-year-old war. "If we want to stop the bloodshed we cannot continue putting the blame on one side or the other," Iran's Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday. This is a very important step. Especially because the coalition was created on the basis of categorical rejection of any talks with the regime," Lavrov was quoted as saying on Sunday by Russia's Itar Tass news agency. Almost 5,000 people were killed in Syria in January alone, according to new figures reported by the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The dismal figures - which come amid a growing refugee crisis in the border camps which are overrun with people fleeing the conflict - underlined the urgent need to find some form of diplomatic breakthrough. Egypt Israel and the Palestinian territories Phone calls to the political leaders of Israel and Palestine were among John Kerry's first diplomatic duties as he bedded in to his new job as secretary of state this weekend. Kerry told Mahmoud Abbas that he was "very interested in the peace process and aware of the economic hardships of the Palestinian people," according to Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabel Abu Rdeneh.