The new United Nations envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is to make his first trip to Damascus Tuesday for holding three days of talks Syrian media reported.
A European diplomat in Beirut told AFP that de Mistura would arrive in the Lebanese capital Monday and travel to Damascus by road Tuesday.
A former Italian deputy foreign minister, de Mistura was appointed in July to replace veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who resigned in May after two rounds of peace talks ended in failure.
More than 180,000 people have been killed in Syria since March 2011 when peaceful protest began against the regime of the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.