AP, Damascus

Syrians in government-controlled areas headed to polling stations Wednesday to elect a new 250-member parliament that is expected to serve as a rubber stamp for President Bashar Assad.
Voters began turning up shortly after the stations opened at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT). Around 3,500 government-approved candidates are competing after more than 7,000 others dropped out.
Early Wednesday, Assad and his wife, Asma, cast their ballots at the Assad Library in Damascus. The president did not make any comments.
The country’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, told reporters after voting: “We in Syria always say that the Syrian people decide their destiny and today they are proving practically the accuracy of this saying.”
Parliamentary elections in Syria are held every four years, and Damascus says the vote is constitutional and separate from the peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the five-year war.
But the opposition says it contributes to an unfavorable climate for negotiations amid fierce fighting that threatens an increasingly tenuous cease-fire engineered by the United States and Russia.
Western leaders and members of the opposition have denounced the voting as a sham and a provocation that undermines the Geneva peace talks.
In the Syrian capital, voters said they fully supported holding the elections on time.
“I feel proud today because the elections are a national and democratic duty any honest citizen should practice,” said Wahid Chahine, a 54-year-old government employee, after casting his ballot at a Damascus polling station.