Delegates today arrived for the first Syria Peace Congress in Russia, but expectations for the dialogue are tempered after the war-torn country's main opposition group said it would boycott the event. <br/><br/>Regime-backer Moscow has invited 1,600 people to the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi as part of a broader push to consolidate its influence in the region and start hammering out a path to a political solution to end the bloody conflict. <br/><br/>The aim of the congress is to bring Syria closer to creating a post-war constitution, after two days of separate UN-backed talks in Vienna last week closed without any sign the warring sides had met face-to-face to discuss the groundwork for the document.<br/><br/>Moscow, which has spearheaded 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.<br/><br/>The Syrian war, which has seen millions displaced, began in 2011 as the regime crushed anti-government protests.