Moscow, May 27 (IANS/RIA Novosti): Damascus will attend next month's peace conference in Geneva aimed at helping resolve the country's crisis, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime has agreed "in principle to participate in the international conference which is supposed to be convened in Geneva", Aljazeera quoted Muallem as saying.

"We think that the international conference represents a good opportunity for a political solution to the crisis in Syria," Muallem said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after a Moscow meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month that the two countries had decided to hold an international conference, aimed at facilitating a solution to the Syrian crisis through political dialogue.

Moscow wants to involve all the nations which took part in the Geneva conference on Syria last summer. The conference is expected to be held at the beginning of June.

Syria has been locked in a civil war since demonstrations broke out against the Assad regime in March 2011. According to UN estimates, some 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict.