Syria's weakened opposition wants deadline for regime Ultimatum: The leader of Syria's Western-backed opposition, Ahmad Al-Jarba speaks to reporters after an informal Security Council meeting on the situation in Syria. The new head of the main Syrian exile opposition group says he is prepared to attend a peace conference in Geneva with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad without conditions. But the group's president, Ahmad al-Jarba, said in New York at the weekend that he wanted assurances from the US there would be a deadline for making progress. "We believe there should be a precise time frame," he said. The regime is used to manipulating the process and wasting time. Mr Jarba, who met US Secretary of State John Kerry last week, said he would not propose a specific deadline until the talks were closer at hand. But Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian opposition member who participated in the meeting with Mr Kerry, said the opposition believed that "Geneva must accomplish something in the first six months." With the death toll in the Syrian civil war exceeding 100,000, MrKerry has continued to press for an international conference in Geneva, a proposal that is facing formidable obstacles, including Russia's insistence that Iranian officials attend. Experts have argued that if the talks are ever convened they are unlikely to make headway in the near term, as Dr Assad, drawing on arms from Russia and Iran, appears to have the upper hand in the fighting and no interest in yielding power. Still, US officials have argued that it is important for the opposition to attend the conference to maintain Western support, and because they hope the forum might eventually provide a framework for an agreement to establish a postAssad transitional government, although it could take months - and perhaps years. Sitting down with representatives of the Assad government, however, remains a delicate issue for the group, which understands that its co-operation on the political front strengthens its appeals for Western military support, but which is also striving to build up its credibility within Syria. That task, opposition officials worry, will be all the more difficult if Homs falls to government forces or if the Syrian military is pounding the rebels with artillery, airstrikes and rockets while talks drag on. "We will lose all credibility if the regime draws us into three or four years of talks, which have no substance," Mr Ghalioun said.