Nabil Elaraby also told journalists in Cairo upon his return from Damascus that he had urged the Syrian president to "speed up reform plans through a timetable that will make every Syrian citizen feel that he has moved to a new stage."
He described the talks with Assad as a "frank conversation," but offered few details.
SANA, the official Syrian news agency, said Assad told Elaraby that there was need "to not get caught in campaigns of disinformation against Syria." It said Assad denounced the campaign of spreading "wrong facts" aimed in his opinion "to harm the image of Syria and destabilize" the country.
Elaraby was originally expected to visit Damascus on Wednesday but the visit was delayed at Syria's request in what appeared to be a sign of the country's growing alarm over any outside criticism.
Activists said security forces killed seven people in northwestern and central Syria on Saturday.
"Five civilians were killed during a military and security operation to track down wanted people in the Al-Basateen neighborhood of Homs," in central Syria, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In the northwestern province of Idlib a 45-year-old man was killed when security forces manning a checkpoint opened fire, said the Observatory, while the Local Coordination Committees said a woman was killed at dawn in Saraqeb.
The head of a US-based rights group said in Tunis that the death toll in Syria from the crackdown on anti-regime protests has topped 3,000. "More than 3,000 people have been killed, the majority of them civilians, in 112 Syrian towns and cities," Radwan Ziadeh, head of the Washington-based Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria, said. They included 123 aged under 18, he added.
Some 40 Syrian exiles meanwhile announced in Vienna the formation of a new grouping opposed to the Syrian government. The Union of Syrians Abroad aims to bring about the fall of the Damascus regime and the establishment of multiparty democracy.
The participants at the founding meeting came from 15 countries including Germany, Greece, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Austria.
