New international envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi has a "daunting but not insurmountable" task to work out a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Syria, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday, DPA reported.
"To succeed, he needs your united and effective support to help the warring parties realize that the solution will not come through arms, but through dialogue that respects the universal rights and freedoms of all Syrians," Ban told the UN General Assembly in New York.
The humanitarian situation in Syria is "grave and deteriorating" and the conflict is impacting the country and neighbouring countries, Ban said. The UN said Syrians were fleeing their country in record numbers, a total of 103,000 in August alone.
Brahimi, who replaced Kofi Annan on Saturday to head diplomatic efforts in Syria, informed the 193-nation assembly that he planned to visit Cairo and Damascus "in a few days time" and other capitals to seek help for a political process to end the conflict.
The process should "lead to a transition that respects the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and enables them independently and democratically to determine their own future," Brahimi said in his short address to the assembly.
"The future of Syria will be built by its people and none other," he said, asking the international community to support his efforts.
Red Cross chief Peter Maurer on Tuesday met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus to discuss the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the country while a UN report said a record 103,000 Syrians had fled the fighting in August.
During the 45-minute meeting, Maurer asked al-Assad to show respect for humanitarian law and for ways to help his organization reach the needy across Syria.
"The meeting focused on all the humanitarian issues and the protection of civilians ... and it also touched on the ICRC visits to prisons," Rabab Rifai, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman in Damascus, told dpa.
After the meeting, the ICRC chief toured the area of Mazamiyeh, in Damascus, and visited a Syrian Red Crescent "medical station." He also toured a school hosting displaced civilians.
State television said al-Assad told Maurer that he supported the work of the ICRC in Syria, so long as it remains "impartial and independent."
The ICRC and the Red Crescent have provided relief to more than 800,000 people and helped more than 1 million people access clean water, an ICRC statement said.
In Geneva, UN refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said that some 103,000 Syrians fled their country in August, the highest monthly number since the conflict broke out last year.
Amid intensifying violence, the total number of refugees in neighbouring countries has risen to 235,000, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
There are currently 8,000 people waiting to cross the border to Turkey, the agency added.
Meanwhile, activists in Damascus said that the government had started to call on army reserves, a sign that the army has been weakened by the 18-month conflict in the country and the defections that have hit its ranks.
"The regime has started to call on reserves because their army is strained and because many have defected," activist Haytham al-Abdallah told dpa.
"Army soldiers have started in the capital to go to the homes of some reserves to take them by force. Many of the reserves have fled the city already," said al-Abdallah, who is also a member of the opposition Local Coordination Committees, which document violence across Syria.
In Syria, most men over 18 are obliged to serve a period in the army, and the government can call on them for any required duty.
State television also showed video footage of young men clad in army fatigues marching, training and chanting the national anthem.
Violence across the country on Tuesday claimed the lives of more than 90 people, most of whom were in the northern province of Aleppo.
Activists based in Lebanon told dpa that the sound of heavy shelling could be heard across the border and that black smoke covered the Zabadani area inside Syria.
In Aleppo, rebels claimed to have snatched rocket launchers from government forces, according to video footage posted online showing rebels standing next to a truck carrying a rocket launcher.
State-run television quoted an army military commander as saying their forces would soon "crush" the rebels in the northern province.