The state news agency SANA said constitutional amendments, including changes to an article which puts the Baath Party at the center of Syrian politics, would be on the agenda of the meeting.

Hours before the announcement, Syrian activists called for sweeping political changes to end 41 years of Assad family rule in a rare meeting in Damascus allowed by the authorities under pressure from a three-month popular uprising.

"The solution to this crisis has to address its root causes. This regime must be toppled and replaced with a democratic system," said leading Syrian writer Michel Kilo, who spent three years as a political prisoner.

The meeting at a Damascus hotel included noted critics of Assad as well as some supporters. Organizers said the gathering had approval from a senior aide to Assad.

Other speakers in the conference, attended by 150 people, adopted a softer tone but said demands of street protesters after decades of autocratic rule must be met.

Writer Louay Hussein, who was also a political prisoner, said repression in the last four decades have undermined Syria as a whole while emphasizing that peaceful means must be found to meet popular demands.

Monther Khaddam, an academic from the coastal city of Latakia, said a wider national dialogue is needed but that intellectuals were "behind street demands until the end".

Organizers of the conference described it as a platform for independent figures searching for a way out of the violence.