MONTREUX, Switzerland (AP) — Peace talks to carve a path out of Syria’s civil war got off to a rocky start yesterday as a bitter clash over President Bashar Assad’s future threatened to collapse the negotiations even before they had begun.

The dispute over Assad cast a pall over an international conference that aims to map out a transitional government and ultimately a democratic election for the country mired in fighting that has killed more than 130,000 people and displaced millions.

While diplomats sparred against a pristine Alpine backdrop, Syrian forces and opposition fighters clashed across a wide area from Aleppo and Idlib in the north to Daraa in the south, activists and state media said.

The two sides seemed impossibly far apart just hours into the talks in the Swiss city of Montreux. Complicating matters, both Assad’s delegates and the Western-backed opposition Syrian National Coalition claimed to speak for the Syrian people.

“We did not expect instant breakthroughs. …No one underestimated the difficulties,” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters at the end of the day. “The Syrian people are looking desperately for relief from the nightmare in which they are trapped.”

A UN mediator will meet separately with both Syrian sides today to see if they can even sit together in face-to-face talks due to begin Friday. The mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, said both sides had shown some willingness to bend on humanitarian access and local ceasefires, and he hoped to build on that common ground.

The US and the Syrian opposition opened the conference by saying that Assad lost his legitimacy when he crushed the once-peaceful protest movement against his regime.

“We really need to deal with reality,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry. “There is no way — no way possible in the imagination — that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern. One man and those who have supported him can no longer hold an entire nation and a region hostage.”

The Syrian response was firm and blunt.

“There will be no transfer of power and President Bashar Assad is staying,” Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi told reporters.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, who refused to give up the podium despite numerous requests from the UN chief, declared that terrorists and foreign meddling had ripped his country apart.

“You live in New York. I live in Syria,” he angrily told Ban. “I have the right to give the Syrian version here in this forum. After three years of suffering, this is my right.”

Ahmad al-Jarba of the Syrian National Coalition had wavered up to the last minute on whether to attend the peace talks that have been largely opposed by rebel brigades in Syria.

He said any discussion of Assad’s continued hold on power would effectively end the talks. A transitional government “is the only topic for us,” he said.

But al-Moallem insisted that no one except Syrians could remove Assad. He also accused the West and neighbouring countries — notably Saudi Arabia, which he did not name — of funnelling money, weapons and foreign fighters to the rebellion.

“The West claims to fight terrorism publicly while they feed it secretly,” he said. “Syrians here in this hall participated in all that has happened, they implemented, facilitated the bloodshed and all at the expense of the Syrian people they claim to represent.”

The question of Assad’s future goes to the heart of the peace conference with the stated goal of a transitional government for Syria. Notably absent was Iran, which along with Russia has been Assad’s most forceful supporter.

Ban invited, then disinvited Iran at the last minute, after the Syrian opposition threatened to back out of the peace talks less than 48 hours before their start.

At the end of a tense day in a peaceful setting, Ban said even getting the two sides in the same room was something of a success.

“This meeting was conducted in a harmonious and constructive way,” he said.