ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)<br/> <br />STORY: British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Geneva on Tuesday (January 21) ahead of the upcoming "Geneva 2" conference on Syria.<br/> <br />The peace conference, which begins on Wednesday (January 22), will be the first meeting between the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and his opponents.<br/> <br />The opposition says the talks, actually taking place in Montreux, must seek Assad's removal from power.<br/> <br />The U.N. secretary-general nearly torpedoed the talks with his botched invitation to Iran which he later withdrew.<br/> <br />Western countries have long insisted Tehran sign up to the final statement from the previous Geneva conference in 2012 before it could attend other talks.<br/> <br />It has been 18 months since a previous international peace conference in Geneva ended in failure, and all other diplomatic initiatives have also proven fruitless.
