Participants at a Syrian peace conference in Russia called for respect for the country's territorial integrity and said the Syrian people alone should decide the shape of their government, according to a final statement obtained by Reuters.

Russia, a staunch ally of Bashar Assad, was hosting what it called a Syrian Congress of National Dialogue in the Black Sea resort of Sochi that it hopes will launch talks on drafting a new constitution for Syria.

The statement said the participants had agreed on "basic principles" deemed essential for saving Syria after nearly seven years of civil war and endorsed a "democratic" path for the country through elections.

The statement made no mention of Assad.

The main aim of the talks is to establish a committee to create a post-war constitution for Syria with UN backing, according to a draft statement seen by AFP.

The Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), the country's main opposition group, said following two days of U.N.-led talks in Vienna last week it would not attend the Sochi congress.

The SNC accused Assad and his Russian backers of continuing to rely on military might and showing no willingness to enter into honest negotiations.

Russia, which has spearheaded several rounds of talks from the start of last year in Kazakhstan's Astana, initially hoped to convene the congress in Sochi last November but those efforts collapsed following a lack of agreement among co-sponsors.

Moscow's decision to launch a bombing campaign to support Assad in September 2015 -- Russia's first major military operation abroad since Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 -- is widely seen as a turning point in the multi-front conflict that helped shore up the Syrian regime's leader.

The Syrian war, in which more than 340,000 people have died and millions more been displaced, began in 2011 as the regime crushed counter-protests.