Chances of U.N. Peace Talks on Syria Appear Dim as Both Sides Dig In DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Antagonists in the Syrian conflict appeared to harden their negotiating positions on Wednesday, further dimming the possibility that the United Nations would be able to convene talks in coming weeks aimed at halting the civil war despite intensified diplomatic pressure from both the United States and Russia. Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Syria's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, on Wednesday. Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, said President Bashar al-Assad would remain in office until elections next year and might even seek another term. The Syrian Coalition, the main umbrella opposition group, said that it welcomed the idea of negotiations but that Mr. Assad and his security and military subordinates must "step down and be excluded from the political process." While the Syrian Coalition statement did not call those demands preconditions to negotiations, it did not commit to attending an international conference under United Nations auspices in Geneva, which both the Americans and the Russians have been pressing to hold as early as next month. The opposition's statement came as its own internal divisions became even more pronounced, an issue that has long afflicted the diverse array of Mr. Assad's adversaries in the conflict that is now more than two years old. An opposition meeting that began last week in Istanbul, aimed at reaching a unified decision on attending the Geneva conference and electing a new leader, has reached no definitive conclusions, participants said. In Washington, a State Department official said it was possible that the conference might not be held until July, partly because of the Syrian opposition's internal wranglings. A bloc of four leading anti-Assad activist organizations issued a statement strongly criticizing the Syrian Coalition, asserting that it had "failed to fulfill its responsibility to represent the great Syrian people's revolution at the organizational, political and humanitarian levels." Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian Coalition, said in a telephone interview that the opposition was under pressure by supportive foreign governments to add new liberal members "to bring internal balance to the group." Others said that of 23 new names suggested, participants in the Istanbul meeting had agreed on only eight of them. The new members include Michel Kilo, a veteran liberal Christian opposition figure, and four others from his bloc, the Democratic Forum. Members said that Mr. Kilo gave a speech addressing the Syrian Coalition and explaining that even though he had no interest in joining the opposition body, he felt now that it was his duty to unite with the other opposition members and to form one front that would go to Geneva. "The regime has voice, just one," said Adib Sishakly, a Syrian Coalition official reached by telephone. We can't go to Geneva with five different voices. We must unite and agree. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said that despite American and Russian pressure on him to convene a meeting as soon as possible, basic elements of such a meeting had yet to be finalized, including a specific date. The lack of progress came as Syrian forces backed by fighters from Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite organization that supports Mr. Assad, made major progress toward gaining control of the strategically important town of Qusayr near the Lebanon border. Qusayr is considered a smuggling route that supplies rebels with weapons, ammunition and fighters. It also connects Damascus with Syria's Mediterranean coast heartland, populated by Mr. Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The insurgency, by contrast, draws largely from Syria's Sunni majority, and the fighting around Qusayr has underscored the increasingly sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict. In Geneva, the United Nations Human Rights Council overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Wednesday that calls for an immediate end to fighting around Qusayr and condemns the intervention of foreign combatants on the government's side - a reference to the Hezbollah fighters. Russia spoke out sharply against the resolution, which was co-sponsored by the United States, laying bare their divisions over the Syrian conflict even as they are collaborating to convene the peace conference. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia, speaking in Moscow, criticized the resolution as "odious and one-sided," and Russia's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Alexei Borodavkin, told the council that this "dangerous and hypocritical" resolution was "untimely, counterproductive and likely to complicate the launch of the peace process in Syria." Reporting was contributed by Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva; Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon; Michael R. Gordon from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.