BEIRUT: The UN chief told Bashar al-Assad on Sunday to "stop killing your people" and the Syrian leader offered an amnesty for "crimes" committed during a 10-month-old revolt against him.
Arab League foreign ministers will meet next on Sunday to discuss the future of an Arab monitoring mission sent last month to check if Syria is respecting an Arab peace plan.
Assad's violent response to the uprising has killed more than 5,000 people, by a UN count. The Syrian authorities say 2,000 members of the security forces have also been killed.
"Today, I say again to President Assad of Syria: stop the violence, stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a conference in Lebanon on democratic transitions in the Arab world.
Assad's amnesty will run to the end of January, covering army deserters and people who possessed illegal arms or had violated laws on peaceful protest, the state news agency SANA said.
Syria's Addounia television said Arab monitors discussed the amnesty with Damascus police on Sunday. Opponents of Assad said the amnesty was meaningless because most detainees were held without charge in secret police or military facilities with no due process or legal documentation.
"The problem is not those who have reached trial or have been sentenced to terms in civic jails but those who are imprisoned and we don't know where they are or anything about them," said Kamal Labwani, who was freed last month after six years as a political prisoner and is now in Jordan.
The Arab League's Syria committee, whose Qatari chairman has said the observer mission has failed to staunch the bloodshed, will discuss a report by the monitors on Friday, Egypt's MENA news agency said.
The Cairo-based League will not send any more monitors to Syria before the Arab foreign ministers meet next Sunday, MENA said.
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