Rivals agree to draft charter

♦ Syria calls air strike on govt troops 'terrorism' 
♦ Russia says unacceptable breach of sovereignty

Syria's warring sides entered a final day of UN-backed talks yesterday with little sign of progress towards ending the conflict and with negotiations overshadowed by swelling tensions on the ground.

In the first concrete results from talks this week, the United Nations said the warring sides had agreed to set up expert committees to discuss "constitutional issues."

Representatives of Syria's government and opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) are in Switzerland for the sixth round of UN-backed peace negotiations, but there has been no sign of progress.

On Thursday, UN mediator Staffan de Mistura's office declared a first tangible step: a series of separate meetings with the government and HNC delegations to discuss "legal and constitutional issues of relevance to the intra-Syrian talks".

The announcement appeared to be a watered-down version of a previous UN proposal towards a new constitution.

But late Thursday, eight rebel groups suspended their participation in the HNC's delegation, expressing dissatisfaction with the decision-making process at the talks.

The statement, published by rebel group Faylaq al-Sham, came on the eve of the last day of talks.

A new constitution for Syria is one of four separate topics or "baskets" on the agenda at the talks, alongside governance, elections and combating "terrorism."

By Thursday, however, government delegation head Bashar al-Jaafari said his team had "not discussed any baskets yet."

Meanwhile, Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Ja'afari said yesterday a US military strike in Syria on Thursday was "government terrorism" and caused a massacre, while Russia called it an unacceptable breach of Syrian sovereignty.

US officials told Reuters that the US military carried out the air strike on Thursday against militia supported by the Syrian government that posed a threat to US forces and US-backed Syrian fighters in the country's south.

Ja'afari said he had raised the incident with UN mediator Staffan de Mistura at peace talks in Geneva.

"We discussed the massacre that the US aggressor committed yesterday in our country. This subject was widely discussed," Ja'afari told reporters.

"The important thing is that our political ambition is higher because we want to focus on fighting terrorism represented by armed groups and the state and government terrorism happening against our country.

"This includes the American aggression, French aggression and British aggression, whether on civilian or military targets."

The US strike was the second deliberate military attack on forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In April US President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on Damascus.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the US action would hamper efforts to find a political solution to the conflict.