DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met peace envoy Kofi Annan on Tuesday, the state news agency SANA said, following a massacre which Syria's government blamed on Islamist militants while United Nations observers implicated the army.
Annan is attempting to salvage a six-week-old peace plan that has United Nations and Arab League backing, but which has barely slowed the bloodshed in a 14-month-old uprising against Assad's rule that began with peaceful mass protests and now has an armed insurgency.
Annan, on a mission from the United Nations and Arab League, is expected to urge compliance with the ceasefire deal.
In Damascus on Monday, Annan called on the authorities to act to end the killing after what he called the "appalling crime" late last week in Houla, near Hama, in which at least 108 people, many of them children, were killed.
Russia and China, long defenders of Assad against Western lobbying for U.N. action, backed a non-binding Security Council text on Sunday that criticized the use of artillery and tanks against Houla, weaponry Syria's rebels do not have.
(Writing by Joseph Logan; Editing by Janet Lawrence)