A senior Syrian official said on Thursday that a long-delayed international conference aimed at ending his country’s civil war was scheduled for Nov. 23-24, but co-organizers Russia and the United States said no date had been set.

In another development, Syrian air force jets bombarded the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Friday after heavy overnight clashes and the killing of one of President Bashar al-Assad’s top military intelligence officers, activists said. Gen. Jama’a Jama’a was shot dead on Thursday by snipers in the midst of a battle with opposition forces including forces linked to al-Qaeda, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. His death, celebrated by the opposition and activists, marked a significant setback for Assad’s bid to retain a hold over the city, capital of the eastern oil-producing province.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the UN Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi also cast doubt on the statement, saying the timing of the conference intended to bring Syria’s government and opposition together had not yet been agreed.

Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil gave what he said were the dates for the meeting during a news conference in Moscow. He later told Reuters: “This is what [UN Secretary-General] Ban Ki-moon is saying, not me.”

Hours later, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said: “We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”

“It is not a matter for Syrian officials but the responsibility of UN Secretary General to announce and set dates agreed with all sides,” he said.

The United States seconded that. ”We have discussed potential dates but nothing has been finalized,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told a daily briefing. “No date is final until it is set and announced by the UN.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has suggested the conference be held sometime in mid-November, will attend a meeting of the “Friends of Syria,” including Western and Gulf Arab countries, in London on Tuesday where the peace talks will be discussed, Psaki added.

Brahimi spokeswoman Khawla Mattar said she did not expect a date to be announced before early November. “We are still not announcing a date because we don’t think they are finalized or agreed by all parties,” Mattar said.
Jets bomb eastern Syrian city

A death notice published on Facebook said Jama’a’s body was being flown back for burial on Friday in his home village of Zama in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean Sea - the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect.

Syria’s two-and-a-half-year civil war began as a peaceful protest movement but has degenerated into a brutal civil war with sectarian dimensions. Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority has largely joined the uprising against four decades of Assad family rule. Minority sects such as the Alawites, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, have largely stood behind the president.

Jama’a, 59, had served as Syria’s top military intelligence officer in Lebanon until Damascus withdrew its forces from its smaller neighbour under intense international pressure in 2005.

The withdrawal followed the Feb. 14, 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, a killing widely blamed at the time on Syria, and for which Jama’a himself was investigated, the Observatory said.

Jama’a was then appointed chief of military intelligence in Deir al-Zor, a prominent and sensitive position because of the flow of Sunni militants across the border into Iraq where insurgents were fighting US and Iraqi Shiite forces.

In August 2011, five months after protests first erupted against Assad, the European Union imposed sanctions on Jama’a for his role in “repression and violence against the civilian population”.

Activists say dozens of opposition and pro-Assad forces have been killed this week in heavy fighting around Deir al-Zor.

The Observatory reported clashes overnight in several districts of the city overnight and said opposition from the al- Qaeda-linked Nusra Front executed 10 soldiers they captured in the Rashidiyah district, where Jama’a was killed on Thursday.

While the opposition had made progress and launched an attack on the nearby military airport, they were unlikely to achieve a speedy victory in the strategic oil region which borders Iraq, the Observatory’s Rami Abdulrahman said.


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