Syria opposition urged to join talks
Syria's moderate opposition should "commit itself fully" to planned peace talks, the UK and US have said.
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The talks in Geneva next month offered Syrians the "best hope to improve their lives", UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
He was speaking after Arab and Western foreign ministers gathered in London to meet Syrian opposition officials.
A key group in Syria's main opposition alliance has threatened to boycott the planned meeting, dubbed Geneva II.
Mr Hague's US counterpart John Kerry said he believed and hoped the meeting would go ahead as planned but that Western countries could not control whether all parties would attend.
Addressing the opposition, Mr Kerry said: "You can win at the negotiating table what it may take a long time and a lot of... loss of life to win on the battlefield."
Mr Hague said the ministers had agreed to "put our united and collective weight behind the UN-led Geneva II process".
The process envisaged the establishment "by mutual consent a transitional governing body with full executive powers," Mr Hague said.
He reaffirmed the view of the Friends of Syria group - Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Italy, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States - that Geneva II must be about a political transition in Syria away from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Any transitional government could only be agreed with the consent of the Syrian National Coalition, and therefore Mr Assad would play no role in it, Mr Hague added.
The Syrian National Council (SNC) has been unwilling to talk to representatives of Mr Assad's government.
Mr Kerry said he expected representatives of the government to attend and to "negotiate in good faith".
Mr Hague and Mr Kerry also pledged further backing for Syria's moderate opposition, aimed at bolstering them in the face of rising influence extremists from power in the war-gripped country.
Rebel rivalries
Earlier, Mr Hague admitted in comments to the BBC's Today programme that an increasingly prominent role was being played in Syria by Islamist rebels linked to al-Qaeda, who have been involved in bitter struggles with more moderate forces.
"The longer this conflict goes on, the more sectarian it becomes. That's why we're making a renewed effort" with Geneva II, Mr Hague said.
Iran as yet has no role in Geneva II, but Mr Hague said he was trying to use new positive diplomatic relations with Iran to encourage it to play a "more constructive role".
Mr Hague and Mr Kerry reiterated their position that Mr Assad had lost any legitimacy to rule.
But Mr Assad earlier told Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television that he saw no reason why he could not run for the presidency again.
"Personally, I don't see any obstacles to being nominated to run in the next presidential elections," he was quoted as saying by the channel.
Mr Assad told the channel that his government would take part in the conference without preconditions, but suggested the prospects that it would reach a settlement were, at present, dim.
"No time has been set, and the factors are not yet in place if we want to succeed," he told al-Mayadeen.
"Which forces are taking part? What relation do these forces have with the Syrian people? Do these forces represent the Syrian people, or do they represent the states that invented them?" he asked.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are key funders of opposition forces in Syria, including, it is believed, hardline Islamist groups.
Geneva positions
On Monday, the main opposition alliance, the National Coalition, said it was postponing until early November meetings to decide whether to attend the Geneva II conference.
The opposition has been further weakened by fighting between the moderate Free Syrian Army and Islamist rebel groups.
Also on Tuesday, the UN Special Co-ordinator for the mission to destroy Syria's chemical weapons, Sigrid Kaag, said in a statement that to date, the Syrian government had "fully cooperated" in the mission's work.
Western officials have been buoyed by the initial results of the chemical disarmament effort, the BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says.
But he adds that they are painfully aware that the recent chemical deal has done nothing to alter the course of the civil war or to reduce the burgeoning humanitarian catastrophe in and around Syria.
Participants at the first round of talks in June 2012 (Geneva I) had sought to end the civil war by getting Damascus and the opposition to choose a transitional government.
More than 100,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.