Russia said Friday after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Syria envoy that it was unaware of any plans by President Bashar al-Assad to leave power.

Senior Russian diplomats said they also told special envoy Fred Hof that Moscow was willing to agree changes to international envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria as long as they kept the tattered initiative alive.

Germany said Friday it was "horrified" by the latest Syrian massacre and urged Russia to throw its support behind a tougher condemnation of Damascus by the United Nations Security Council.

Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a regular briefing that Syrian President Bashar Assad had lost all "legitimacy" and that a political solution was "unthinkable.”

British Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher stressed on Friday that the resumption of national dialogue proves that the Lebanese leaders are determined to work together to maintain stability.

“This sends an important signal of determination and resilience,” Fletcher said after meeting with President Michel Suleiman at the Baabda Palace.

China on Friday condemned the latest civilian killings in Syria, but refused to back a call by U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan to increase the pressure on the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Annan told the U.N. Security Council Thursday he feared the crisis would "spiral out of control" unless there is more international pressure on Assad.

Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday insisted that claims his supporters were involved in fighting in Syria were false, but said members of "splinter" groups could be involved in the violence.

"All these claims are lies," Sadr, a powerful Shiite cleric, said in a written response to a question from one of his followers over allegations that Sadrists are taking part in the violent suppression of the ongoing uprising against the Syrian regime.

Prime Minister Najib Miqati urged the opposition on Friday to become more “constructive” as governments change but the state remains the main foundation of the country.

“It’s unacceptable to attack the state in order to change any cabinet,” Miqati said at the annual meeting of INSEAD Alumni Association and Institute of Business Administration at Phoenicia Hotel in Beirut.

Rebels and regime troops clashed in a district of the Syrian capital as scores of protests were held across the strife-torn country and more than 20 people killed on Friday, monitors said.

Clashes broke out in Kfar Sousa, a Damascus district where anti-regime sentiment is strong, while explosions rocked the Mazzeh and Al-Qadam neighborhoods, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The head of al-Rama border town municipality in the northern Wadi Khaled area of Akkar, Khaled Souaidan, was released after being detained by the Syrian intelligence, the National News Agency reported on Friday.

According to the news agency, Souaidan was released overnight after being arrested for two days in the neighboring country Syria.

China said Thursday it was firmly opposed to "outside armed intervention" in Syria or "any attempt to forcibly promote regime change" amid mounting violence in the country, Xinhua reported.

China's U.N. envoy Li Baodong told the U.N. General Assembly that China was committed to playing a "positive and constructive role in finding an early peaceful and proper solution to the Syrian question," but made no mention of international envoy Kofi Annan's six-point plan.

No U.N. monitors were wounded when shots were fired Thursday at a convoy trying to get into a Syrian village after a massacre there of several dozen people, a U.N. spokesman said.

"No military observers were injured but one vehicle was slightly damaged," U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told Agence France Presse.