Last Thursday, a compound on the outskirts of the capital, the Air Force Intelligence headquarters in Harasta, was attacked.

The Free Syrian Army, an insurgent group made of defecting soldiers and based in southern Turkey, claimed responsibility for both attacks.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an exile opposition group, said that unidentified men threw a sound bomb at dawn Sunday at a branch for security forces in the Damascus neighborhood of al-Mayssat, but that it landed nearby.

The group said that an hour later unidentified men on motorcycles fired a rocket-propelled grenade on the Baath Party offices, in the upscale neighborhood of Mazraa, that hit the outside wall of the building. The group said that before security forces reached the area, insurgents fired two other rocket-propelled grenades that did not strike their target.

Like other attacks so far on government installations in Idlib and the capital’s suburbs, it seemed to be more of a symbolic message than a real threat. In destruction and carnage, it pales before the worst episodes in the last uprising in the late 1970s and early 1980s that threatened the Assad family’s four decades of rule.

At a news conference on Sunday, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said reports of the attack were “totally unfounded.”

The raid could not be independently confirmed because Damascus has banned most foreign journalists from entering the country. A nearby resident said she heard a loud explosion in the morning, but that it did not appear to have caused any damage.

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The Free Syrian Army said the attack was a response to the government’s refusal to comply with an Arab League peace plan, under which it agreed to free tens of thousands of political prisoners and to withdraw its troops from the streets.

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A second deadline set by the Arab League for Syria to end the crackdown passed Saturday with continued violence. The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group that helps document protests, said 17 people were killed Saturday.

Mr. Moallem, the foreign minister, said last week that Syria had complied with the plan, pulling its security forces from urban areas and releasing more than 1,700 prisoners since Nov. 2, the day it announced its agreement to the plan. An American official said that some military forces had been withdrawn from Homs, though residents insist they were redeployed as police forces.

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On Sunday, the Arab League rejected an attempt by Syria to amend a proposal to send Arab military and civilian monitors to oversee the implementation of the plan, including a request that Syria choose the monitors.

“They are trying to change what they already agreed,” said Nabil el-Araby, the secretary-general of the Arab League.

The group said its foreign ministers would meet Thursday in Cairo to decide the next step.

Mr. Moallem, in his news conference, said Syria would continue talks with the Arab League over observers but insisted that the initial proposal was “unbalanced” and undermined Syria’s sovereignty.

“We in Syria do not consider that the deadline is the important issue,” he said. “The content is the important issue, and to reach an agreement with the Arab League is what counts.”

Mr. Assad, meanwhile, insisted in an interview with The Sunday Times of London that he would fight on against what he described as “armed gangs.”

“The conflict will continue, and the pressure to subjugate Syria will continue,” he said. “Syria will not bow down. The only way is to search for the armed people, chase the armed gangs, prevent the entry of arms and weapons from neighboring countries, prevent sabotage and enforce law and order.”

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He also said that he was “definitely” prepared to fight and die for Syria if faced with foreign military intervention. “This goes without saying and is an absolute,” he said. The newspaper posted a video of the interview on its Web site.

Since the start of the uprising, Mr. Assad has offered limited reforms that have done little to stanch the movement’s momentum, and since August, the government has relied almost solely on violence to quash dissent. But in the interview, he promised that parliamentary elections would be held in February or March, and that the new Parliament would draft a constitution that would include new laws for presidential elections.

Mr. Assad blames the unrest on armed Islamist groups that he says are financed from abroad and are seeking to divide Syria. His government says that militants have killed more than 1,100 soldiers and police officers since mid-March, when the uprising broke out in the southern town of Dara’a.

Riad al-Assad, a defecting colonel who says he leads the armed opposition from southern Turkey, denied that neighboring countries were financing and arming insurgents and smuggling weapons into the country. He told Al Jazeera television network that arms had come from raids on army bases or were bought from arms dealers inside Syria.