U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly on Tuesday said the U.S. Administration understands Lebanon’s situation and that of the Lebanese-Syrian relations.

“However, we must look at what Lebanon did and the prominent role it played by taking care of the Syrian refugees”, Connelly added, in an interview on LBC.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday an argument could be made for declaring President Bashar al-Assad a war criminal, but said such action could complicate a solution in Syria.

"Based on definitions of war criminal and crimes against humanity, there would be an argument to be made that he would fit into that category," Clinton told a Senate hearing on the State Department budget.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat has slammed the referendum held in Syria on a new constitution for the revolt-hit country, noting that a Yemen-style solution was the best to resolve the crisis.

“Wretched are those days when constitutional theatricals are being held over the remains of bodies and amid the roar of cannons and the sound of bullets,” Jumblat said in a weekly column in his party’s al-Anbaa newspaper to be published Tuesday.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday that reforms have to be synchronized with a return to peace in the unrest-swept country, state media reported.

Assad, in remarks to visiting Mauritanian Prime Minister Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf, said that reforms and a "return to peace" must be concurrent in Syria, according to the official SANA news agency.

A commission tasked with drafting a new Syrian constitution submitted a draft charter to President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, the official SANA news agency reported.

"Assad on Sunday received a copy of the new draft constitution from the head of the national committee charged with drafting a new constitution for the Syrian Arab Republic," SANA said.

Former prime minister Saad Hariri on Friday called on the Arab countries to recognize the opposition Syrian National Council as the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people.

Hariri warned about “the dangers of the war waged by the Syrian regime against the growing popular revolution across Syria,” said a statement released by his press office.

Turkey would consider giving asylum to Syrian President Bashar Assad's family if such a request is made, President Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying by daily Radikal on Thursday.

"There is no such thing right now," said Gul, when asked about Turkey's answer to a possible asylum request from Assad's family.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday stressed Syria’s “keenness on Lebanon’s stability” during a meeting in Damascus with Arab Tawhid Party leader Wiam Wahhab, the party’s media department said in a statement.

The two men discussed the situations in Lebanon and the Arab region during their “three-hour meeting,” the party added.

Fearing the loss of its last Arab ally and seeking to reassert its global clout, Russia is defiantly refusing to budge in a high-stakes diplomatic standoff with the West over the crisis in Syria.

Russia, a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member, has exasperated the West by insisting it will not back a new resolution calling on President Bashar al-Assad to step down despite the escalation of violence between the regime and the opposition.

At least 34 people died in violence across Syria on Saturday, as activists reported fierce clashes between soldiers and deserters.

Twenty-three of those reported killed were military or security personnel.