BEIRUT: Syria’s foreign minister signaled on Saturday a cease-fire would be difficult or impossible before the borders with Turkey and Jordan were sealed, and before a list of terrorist groups operating in Syria is agreed.

Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moallem, speaking in a televised news conference, said he was citing his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, who had said “a cease-fire would not be possible before the borders with Turkey and Jordan are controlled, and before agreement on lists of terrorist organizations, it is difficult to achieve that.”

Rebel groups fighting President Bashar Assad have allegedly received supplies via both Turkey and Jordan.

Al-Moallem warned that foreign ground troops entering Syria would “return home in wooden coffins.”

“Any ground intervention in Syria, without the consent of the Syrian government, will be considered an aggression that should be resisted by every Syrian citizen,” he told a news conference in Damascus. “I regret to say that they will return home in wooden coffins.”

Al-Moallem’s comments capped a week that saw the collapse of UN-led efforts to launch indirect peace talks between the Syrian government and an opposition delegation in Geneva.

Al-Moallem said the government advances signaled that the five-year-old Syria war is nearing its end. “I can say, from the achievements for our armed forces ... that we are now on track to end the conflict,” he said. “Like it or not, our battlefield achievements indicate that we are headed toward the end of the crisis.”

He alleged the opposition never intended to negotiate seriously in Geneva. “They did not come to have dialogue, they did not have such orders,” he said.

Al-Moallem said the Syrian government was ready to have dialogue with Syrians, but without preconditions.