Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan presented Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with several proposals to end the bloodshed Saturday.
Annan planned a second round of talks with Assad on Sunday, but it appears his mission is doomed to fail until the opposition is crushed.
The Syrian leader told Annan there could be no dialogue until "terrorist groups" attempting to spread anarchy there are stopped.
The opposition also rejected negotiations, saying it's impossible to engage Assad's regime in the midst of a crackdown the UN estimates has killed more than 7,500 people.
Assad's regime blames terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy for the uprising, not protesters seeking change.
"Many attempts to soften the position of the Syrian government have failed," Middle East expert Houchang Hassan-Yari told Â鶹´«Ã½ Channel Saturday.
"I'm not really sure if Annan is going to be successful where other attempts including that of the Arab League failed," the professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., said.
Annan was appointed last month as the joint special envoy of the UN and the Arab League. His meeting with Assad was called "positive" by Syria's state-run news agency, but few other details were released.
Meanwhile, Hassan-Yari said the UN Security Council is paralyzed with Russian and China using their vetoes to block a resolution condemning the regime.
If new attempts to reach a resolution fail and the Syrian government continues its violent crackdown, there may be no other avenue to go down except military, he said.
"There are people in the U.S. and in Syria itself and among the Arab countries of the (Arab) League, many who believe that there is no other solution but use of force against Assad's regime because that's the only language this regime understands," he said.
Syria is also looking to buy time in order stamp out as much resistance as possible, Hassan-Yari said.
"We know the Assad regime seizes all kinds of opportunities to kill as many opponents as it can," he said, citing the opposition as saying more than 40 people were killed Saturday even before Annan met with the Syrian leader.
"The past of the Assad regime shows this is not the kind of regime that is going to back down and he's not going to leave the power because in his eyes he's absolutely legitimate," Hassan-Yari said.
Syrian troops pushed ahead with the new assault on the northern region of Idlib on Saturday, shelling one of the centres of the uprising against Assad's rule.
Families were sent fleeing for safety as armed rebels tried to fend off the attack. Thick black smoke billowed into the sky.
The military operation has raised fears that the regime is planning a new all-out offensive in Idlib like the bloody siege last month that captured a restive part of the city of Homs, further south.
The Homs bloodshed further fuelled calls among Western and Arab countries for action to stop the crisis, which many fear is descending further toward civil war as the opposition turns more to armed resistance.
