International envoy Kofi Annan expressed "grave concern" to Syria's President Bashar Assad over the deadly crackdown on protests in talks Saturday, the United Nations said.

The former U.N. secretary general "put several proposals on the table regarding stopping the violence and the killing, access for humanitarian agencies and the ICRC, release of detainees, and the start of an inclusive political dialogue," said a U.N. statement.

U.N. humanitarian aid chief Valerie Amos said on Friday that Syria had agreed to allow a preliminary assessment of the relief needs in areas hard hit by the year-old conflict.

Amos, who has toured the battered city of Homs and refugee camps in Turkey this week, also said Damascus must allow aid groups "unhindered access to evacuate the wounded and deliver desperately needed supplies".

Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour telephoned on Friday his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Muallem to discuss the developments in Syria, reported the National News Agency.

Mansour said that Muallem had informed him of the “positive conditions that are returning the situation in Syria back to normal.”

The Army Command stressed on Friday that it will “strike down with an iron fist” any side that attempts to harm it, noting that the Lebanese are counting on it to prevent the eruption of strife.

It said in a statement: “The army will not tire in apprehending the sides that seek to destabilize the country, regardless of their affiliations.”

Tens of thousands demonstrated across Syria on Friday after the main weekly Muslim prayers, notably in northern Aleppo, with security forces opening fire on protesters in various regions, killing at least 82 people, activists said.

"There are 15 demonstrations taking place in the city of Aleppo and about 40 across the province," local activist Mohammed Halabi told Agence France Presse by telephone.

Nine people have been charged with smuggling arms to Syria, announced the National News Agency on Friday.

State commissioner to the military court Judge Saqr Saqr also charged them for the possession of arms and smuggling and trafficking weapons to Syria.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has criticized EU foreign policy Chief Catherine Ashton's diplomatic efforts, calling for better policy coordination, in a letter obtained by Agence France Presse.

"We must improve the workings of the European external action service and the way they mix with diplomatic efforts of union members," he said in the letter sent to Ashton ahead of an EU foreign ministers' meeting Friday and Saturday in Copenhagen.

U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan is to visit Syrian refugee camps in Turkey after travelling to Syria over the weekend, a diplomat told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"Kofi Annan has expressed his wish to come soon to Turkey and we gave our consent," the diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.

The leader of Syria's main opposition group rejected calls Friday by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan for dialogue with President Bashar Assad's government, saying they were pointless and unrealistic as the regime massacres its own people.

As the prospects for diplomacy faltered, Turkey's state-run television TRT said two Syrian generals and a colonel defected to Turkey on Thursday.

Syrian activists voiced growing fears on Friday of a major assault like the one that devastated the Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr, on the eve of a first visit by new international envoy Kofi Annan.

Troop reinforcements backed by tanks were massing in the northwestern province of Idlib, close to the Turkish border, in a bid to root out rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army, activists and a human rights watchdog said.