DAMASCUS — Latest U.N. efforts to resolve the Syria crisis could succeed this time and lead to a united front against “Islamic State” followed by a political transition, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said.

Earlier this week, the United Nations said its Syria envoy would launch fresh consultations with Syrian factions and interested countries on a new round of peace talks, a year after the last such initiative collapsed.

However, Russian envoy Alexey Borodavkin said there was reason to hope for better results now, arguing that both mainstream Syrian opposition and government negotiators increasingly recognized that there was no military solution to the four-year-old civil war, that has killed more than 220,000.

Borodavkin said the fact that some opposition negotiators were no longer supported by a meaningful military, also helped.

“The Free Syrian Army was partly defeated, partly joined the extremist forces of Daesh,” he said, using an Arabic term for ISIS. “This in itself is not a positive development, but this is reality, and the opposition should recognize that.”

While the FSA is a much diminished force, insurgent groups have recently made significant gains against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including mainstream rebels, who seized the Nasib border crossing with Jordan this month.

Russia has forcefully backed Assad in the war, rejecting calls from the opposition and West for him to stand aside.

While the main, Western-backed political opposition alliance sticks to this position, Borodavkin said some opponents were no longer insisting he must step down.

“I do believe that we have to focus not on personalities but on the objective to stop bloodshed first of all, and to fight Daesh together,” he said.

Borodavkin said the emergence of “Islamic State” as an enemy for both the government and political opposition had created common ground.

“They will share the same fate, and that naturally encourages their rapprochement,” he said. “Opposition, government and the outside forces should join efforts in fighting this threat.”

Many diplomats are pessimistic over the U.N.’s chances of ending the Syrian bloodshed. However, Borodavkin said efforts by U.N. Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura to secure a local ceasefire in Aleppo had helped build confidence.

A U.N. spokesman in Geneva, Ahmad Fawzi, said de Mistura was “heavily engaged” in discussions on the process, which would be based on the Geneva communiqué, the June 2012 document that set out a path to peace and political transition but left unresolved the future role of Assad.

A U.N. source in Geneva said Iran would be among those invited, but a senior Western diplomat in New York said on condition of anonymity the question of Tehran’s participation remained unresolved, despite the U.N.’s clear desire to include the Iranians.

Western diplomats in New York said it was hard to be optimistic about the renewed push for Syria peace talks.

Yarmouk crisis

The head of the U.N. agency responsible for Palestinian refugees called from Damascus on Sunday for safe passage for people wishing to leave the Yarmouk camp on the city fringes that “Islamic State” insurgents are trying to take over.

UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Krahenbuhl and another senior U.N. official are in the Syrian capital to find ways to ease the plight of some 18,000 people estimated to be trapped in Yarmouk, which has been under government siege since 2013.

A Syrian military source said the army was giving a chance for solutions aimed at resolving the situation in Yarmouk, which U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said is “beginning to resemble a death camp”.

IS’s arrival in Yarmouk has given the jihadist group a significant foothold a few miles from Assad’s seat of power.

Ban said last Thursday that residents of Yarmouk were being “held hostage” by IS militants and other extremists. He also said they “face a double-edged sword – armed elements inside the camp, and government forces outside.”

IS moved into Yarmouk last week. Aided by fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, it has seized large parts of the camp from other insurgents based there.

Krahenbuhl visited a Damascus school where he met several dozen evacuees from Yarmouk. “We are very concerned of course about the survival needs of the people inside Yarmouk,” he said.

“We called for a very clear respect for the civilians who are inside Yarmouk, we called for the possibility for civilians to temporarily leave in a safe way Yarmouk, to be able to be assisted outside. We will continue to call for this.

“We are thinking very strongly of how we can provide some form of assistance to the people who are inside,” he added.