Syrian peace talks could begin next month Syria's deputy prime minister on Thursday floated Nov. 23 and 24 as possible dates for talks on a political solution to the Syrian conflict, though there's no agreement on the ground rules for such negotiations and the main Western-backed opposition hasn't decided whether to attend. The United States and Russia have been trying to bring the Damascus government and Syria's divided opposition to negotiations in Geneva for months, but the meeting has been repeatedly delayed. It remains unclear if either side is really willing to negotiate while Syria's civil war, now in its third year, remains deadlocked. Meanwhile, the international agency overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical-weapons stockpile said that inspectors have so far found no "weaponized" chemical munitions, or shells ready to deliver poison gas or nerve agents, and that Syria's declarations up to now have matched what inspectors found. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations are working to verify Syria's initial declaration of its weapons program and render production and chemical mixing facilities inoperable by Nov. 1. Their work on the ground involves smashing control panels on machines and destroying empty munitions. The team has visited 11 of more than 20 sites since Oct. 1 and carried out destruction work at six. Cheap, quick and low-tech. Nothing fancy," OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said of the work. In the next phase, the work gets more complex and dangerous when actual chemical weapons have to be destroyed - in the midst of full-blown war. Renewed efforts to organize political talks between the Syrian regime and the opposition stem from the UN Security Council resolution passed last month to rid Syria of its chemical-weapons program. The resolution also endorsed a framework for a political transition that key countries adopted last year and called for an international conference in Geneva - known in diplomatic shorthand as Geneva II - to be convened "as soon as possible" to implement it. Qadri Jamil, the Syrian deputy prime minister, said Thursday that "we are closer than ever" to talks in Geneva. "In our contact with the [Russian] Foreign Ministry, we were informed about the approximate and hypothetical dates for holding it," he said. Russia's RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying "the conference will be held on the 23rd and 24th of November." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that efforts are intensifying to try to hold the Geneva meeting in mid-November. But Mr. Ban did not provide specific dates, and it's not clear whether the schedule provided by Mr. Jamil has been agreed to by any other parties. The talks have been put off repeatedly, in part because of fundamental disagreements over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, the main alliance of political opposition groups, has said it will only negotiate if it is agreed from the start that Mr. al-Assad will leave power at the end of a transition period. The Assad regime has rejected such a demand.