US not putting enough pressure on opposition

The United States is not putting enough pressure on the Syrian opposition to participate in an international peace conference and drop its demand for President Bashar al-Assad's exit, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said yesterday.
Russia and the United States announced on May 7 that they would try to bring Assad's government and its opponents together as soon as possible at an international conference to seek an end to the civil war, but no date has been set.
"In our view, the United States is definitely not working hard enough in terms of putting influence on Syrian opposition groups so that (they) will come to the international conference," state-run RIA quoted Ryabkov as saying.
Syrian warplanes pounded the embattled town of Qusayr on Monday as a regime offensive backed by fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah to retake the town from rebels entered its third week, AFP reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported a fierce overnight onslaught both on the strategic town near the border with Lebanon and slightly farther north in Dabaa.
Dabaa, the site of a disused military airbase that had been seized by rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad's regime, is still partly under insurgent control.