Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday it was "short-sighted" to think that the crisis in Syria would be solved if President Bashar al-Assad agreed to Western calls to step down.

"To think that Assad's departure would mean the removal of all the problems is a very short-sighted position and everyone understands that if this happened the conflict would most likely continue," the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Medvedev as telling Russian reporters at a summit in Seoul.

Syria has responded afresh to U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on his six-point proposals to end the crisis in the country, the former U.N. chief's spokesman said Monday.

"The Syrian government has formally responded to the Joint Special Envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan's 6-point plan, as endorsed by the U.N. Security Council," he said in a statement. "Mr. Annan is studying it and will respond very shortly."

U.S. President Barack Obama said he and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev agreed Monday to support diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria and ensure a "legitimate" government there.

Syria was one of the top priority issues discussed during a 90-minute meeting between the two leaders in South Korea ahead of a nuclear summit, their final direct talks before Medvedev steps down and makes way for Vladimir Putin.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday that Kofi Annan represented the last chance for avoiding a civil war in Syria and offered the U.N.-Arab League envoy Moscow's full support.

Medvedev's stark message to Moscow's traditional ally came only hours after U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans to send "non-lethal" aid to the Syrian rebels and new waves of violence swept the battle-scarred country.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's visit to China to discuss the crisis in Syria, initially scheduled for this weekend, will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Chinese foreign ministry said.

Annan's spokesman had said on Friday he would visit Beijing and Moscow at the weekend for talks in two countries criticized for resisting global efforts to condemn Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The army resumed shelling the central Syrian protest cities of Homs and Hama on Saturday, monitors reported, as international envoy Kofi Annan headed to Russia in the latest push for peace.

Mortar shells rained down on the flashpoint Khaldiyeh district of Homs continuously for two hours in the morning, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that it had no information about casualties.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday cautioned against attempts to circumvent the authority of the United Nations as the West seeks to secure Moscow's support in the Syria crisis.

"There's a need to eliminate any loopholes allowing (nations) to act in circumvention of the authority of the Security Council and use force without its approval," Medvedev told a European security conference in Moscow.

Thousands protested on Saturday against Vladimir Putin's domination of Russia, but the event struggled to live up to the success of past mass rallies after his crushing election victory.

The protest, which ended with a handful of arrests, was a fraction of the size of previous rallies in Moscow, in a sign the opposition is finding it hard to maintain momentum after Putin won a third Kremlin term on March 4.

Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to rule Russia as a "non-party" leader when he assumes power for a third term as president amid a wave of protests challenging his rule for the first time in 12 years.

"Today, it would probably be appropriate to recall that the president is a non-party figure," Putin told outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev in a televised meeting at the Krasnaya Polyana ski resort on the Black Sea.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin crushed his rivals in presidential elections with almost 64 percent of the vote, according to results published Monday based on an almost complete vote count.

Putin won 63.75 percent of the vote in Sunday's polls, well ahead of his nearest rival the Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov who won 17.19 percent, based on a count of the vote from 99.3 percent of polling stations.