GENEVA/DAMASCUS: Syria’s first peace talks came close to collapsing before they began on Friday, with the opposition refusing to meet President Bashar Assad’s delegation and the government threatening to bring its team home.

Still, figures on both sides later seemed to moderate their positions, expressing a willingness to meet their enemies.

The opposition said early on Friday that it would not meet Assad’s delegation unless it first agreed to sign up to a protocol calling for a transitional administration. The government rejected the demand outright and said its negotiators would return home unless serious talks began within a day.

Earlier, direct talks between Syrian government and the Western-backed opposition that wants to overthrow him were scrapped, which came as a major setback for the peace conference that aims to halt a civil war that has killed at least 130,000 people.

Syria criticized the opposition delegation as “not serious,” and threatened to quit peace talks by Saturday, state television said.

Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallam has told (UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar) Brahimi that should serious sessions fail to take place by tomorrow, the official Syrian delegation will leave Geneva,” the channel said Friday.

Friday was meant to be the first time in three years of war that Assad’s government and foes would negotiate face to face.

But plans were ditched at the last minute after the opposition said the government delegation must first sign up to a 2012 protocol, known as Geneva 1, that calls for an interim government to oversee a transition to a new political order.

“We have explicitly demanded a written commitment from the regime delegation to accept Geneva 1. Otherwise there will be no direct negotiations,” opposition delegate Haitham Al-Maleh told Reuters.

Brahimi, who met the government team for barely an hour, was due to talk to the opposition delegation separately later on Friday.

Both sides appeared to be raising the stakes by presenting maximalist demands from the outset. But figures on the government and opposition sides later said they were still prepared to sit down in the same room.