Protesters have taken to the streets across Syria to denounce a speech by President Bashar al-Assadm which they say did not meet popular demands for sweeping political change.
In the speech, Mr Assad said he will form a committee to study reforming Syria's consititution.
Speaking at Damascus University, Mr Assad urged thousands of refugees who fled the unrest in northern Syria to neighbouring Turkey to return as soon as possible, but said that no political solution was possible with people who bear arms.
The president also said that 64,400 people were wanted by the authorities and some have already handed themselves in.
In what was his first public speech for a number of months, Mr Assad said it was important to differentiate between peoples' legitimate needs and saboteurs and that the country was at a turning point after a difficult period.
He claimed that 'gunmen' had carried out massacres in the border town of Jisr Al-Shughour and were armed with sophisticated weapons and communication.
But in the Sunni Sleibeh and Raml al-Filistini districts of the mixed coastal city of Latakia, where several Sunni neighbourhoods have been surrounded by troops and armour for weeks, protesters chanted ‘liar, liar’.
‘People were still hoping he would say something meaningful that would result in tanks and troops leaving the streets. They were disappointed and started going out as soon as Assad finished talking,’ one activist in Latakia said.
In the city of Hama, scene of a 1982 attack to crush an uprising led by the Muslim Brotherhood that killed thousands of civilians during the rule of Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, protesters chanted ‘damn your soul, Hafez’.
Demonstrations also took place in the eastern city of Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, the southern city of Deraa and other towns in the Hauran Plain, cradle of the uprising, now in its fourth month, and at the campus of Aleppo University, activists said.
Troops 'blocking' refugees
There are reports that the troops are blocking refugees from fleeing a military crackdown on protests against Assad's autocratic rule.
The operation along the border follows the biggest protests in four months of anti-Assad unrest on Friday which a violent clampdown has failed to quash.
Rights groups said security forces shot dead up to 19 protesters.
More than 10,000 Syrian refugees have already crossed into Turkey. Turkish officials say another 10,000 are sheltering close to the border just inside Syria in the olive groves and rich farmland around the town of Jisr al-Shughour.
But a Syrian human rights campaigner said the Syrian army was now stopping those still inside Syria from leaving.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to keep his borders open to refugees and has called the Syrian government crackdown 'savagery', but it is not clear whether Ankara's rapprochement with Damascus has earned Turkey any influence with Assad to halt the violence.
Syria has barred most international journalists from entering the country, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and officials.
Syrian rights groups say at least 1,300 civilians have been killed and 10,000 people detained since March.
