Syrian government delegation to arrive in Geneva Wednesday

GENEVA (AP) — Syria's government delegation will arrive a day late in Geneva to take part in a new round of talks with the opposition, a Syrian foreign ministry official and a U.N. official said Tuesday. The delay appeared to reflect the government's displeasure with the opposition's insistence that President Bashar Assad must leave at the start of any transitional period.

The United Nations is scheduled to resume the talks between the government and the Syrian opposition in the Swiss city on Tuesday. The opposition's delegation arrived Monday after publishing a communique last week that said it was ready for talks "without preconditions," meaning it was not conditioning its participation in the talks on the departure of Assad from office.

However, it said it still held on to its belief that Assad would need to step down at the start of any transitional period for any settlement to the nearly 7-year civil war to succeed.

"I can confirm we have received a message from Government of Syria indicating that their delegation would arrive tomorrow," said Michael Contet, an adviser to U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura.

The Syrian foreign ministry official in Damascus also said the delegation will take part in talks starting Wednesday afternoon and the delegation will be headed by Bashar Ja'afari, Syria's representative at the United Nations.

As in previous talks, a major point of disagreement between the two sides will be the future of Assad.

Damascus has refused to negotiate over Assad's future in any talks with the opposition. It says it wants to focus on defeating "terrorism," its byword for armed opponents of the Syrian president.

The head of the opposition's delegation, Nasr Hariri, told reporters on Monday that the opposition was "ready to negotiate," and accused the government of stalling. "The thing the regime is most afraid of is political negotiations," said Hariri.

"We assert that a political transition that achieves Assad's departure at the beginning of the transitional period is our goal," Hariri said in Geneva on Monday.

The delegation was expanded last week under Saudi Arabian auspices to include opposition groupings seen by Damascus as more palatable for negotiations, including the so-called "Moscow group" which has resisted calling for Assad's departure. Hariri said the reformulation removed any excuse by the government and its chief diplomatic backer, Russia, to circumvent the U.N. talks.

De Mistura stressed he would "not accept any preconditions by any party" to talks, and said the talks would be guided by a 2015 Security Council resolution mandating a political transition for Syria.

This latest round of Geneva talks, the eighth since 2012, will focus on getting to an "inclusive process" to draft and ratify a new constitution, said de Mistura.

De Mistura hailed as "useful" a meeting with diplomats from the five permanent Security Council members, while calling on the rival sides in the war-torn country to get down to "business." De Mistura spoke to The Associated Press after briefing envoys from world powers about the eighth round of U.N.-mediated peace talks under his guidance.

The meeting included Brett McGurk, the U.S. envoy for the fight against the Islamic State group, and the French Foreign Ministry's political and security affairs director Nicolas de Riviere.

Russia's ambassador in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin said Russia appreciated the "opportunity," but "at the same time, we have some doubts about this kind of format, and do not consider it an established one."

De Mistura later met with Hariri at the hotel where the opposition is staying.

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Aji reported from Damascus, Syria.