The latest standoff between Syria and the Arab League comes as the death toll from violence across the country on Saturday and Sunday rose to at least 44, and after the UN Human Rights Council accused Damascus of "gross violations" of human rights.

A senior Qatari official said Damascus had asked for "new clarifications and further amendments to be made to the protocol which was proposed" to cover the deployment of the observer mission.

But the Arab ministers had "refused."

The Qatari official said, however, that if Syrian officials "still want to sign, they can come tomorrow to Cairo."

The Arab League ministerial committee late Saturday gave Damascus until Sunday to allow an observer mission into the country and thereby avoid further sanctions.

The meeting in Doha listed 19 Syrian officials it said would be banned from travel to Arab countries and whose assets would be frozen by those states.

The panel also called for an embargo on the sale of Arab arms to Syria and cut by half the number of Arab flights into and out of Syria with effect from Dec. 15.

The national carrier Syrian Air will be affected by the flight reductions, while among the 19 officials banned from travel to Arab countries are the defense and interior ministers and other top intelligence officials.

President Bashar Assad's brother, Gen. Maher Assad, who heads the feared Fourth Armored Division, and his cousin Rami Makhluf, a telecommunications tycoon, are also among those banned from travel.

The Arab panel also tasked a committee with drawing up a list of Syrian businessmen involved in financing the repression, ahead of slapping them with sanctions.

"This is a message to businessmen who have kept silent, so that they will choose what side to be on," said Najib Ghadban, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council which represents most of Assad's opponents.

Activists said at least a dozen Syrian secret police have defected from an intelligence compound in a restive province near Turkey, the first major defection reported within the security apparatus leading the crackdown on protesters.

A gunfight broke out Saturday night after the defectors fled the air force intelligence complex in the center of Idlib city, 280 km northwest of Damascus, and there were undetermined number of casualties, they said.

Meanwhile, three children aged 11, 14 and 16 and their father, were among 21 people killed on Sunday by security forces and pro-regime "shabiha" militiamen, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Twenty of those killed Sunday died in the flashpoint central province of Homs which has been at the forefront of the regime's crackdown on dissidents, the Britain-based watchdog said.