DAMASCUS, Syria — Coming from a Syrian deputy prime minister, it was an unusual statement. The country’s crisis, he said, began in part with a “popular movement” of peaceful protesters angry over economic disparities, and descended into war in part because officials were slow to make changes and failed to realize that the “repression of the popular movement” would lead to disaster.

Now, days after the official, Qadri Jamil, spoke in an interview, President Bashar al-Assad himself has declared that he and his government have made mistakes and that they share some blame for the crisis with rebels. Mr. Assad told the German magazine Der Spiegel, in an interview to be published on Monday, that he could not claim that the insurgents “did everything and we did nothing.” Reality, he said, has “shades of gray.”

After years of describing the country’s civil war in black and white, as an international terrorist conspiracy, Syrian officials in recent days appear to be trying to sound more conciliatory, as global powers try to arrange peace talks in Geneva to end the bloody stalemate, and as international weapons inspectors began on Sunday to destroy Syria’s chemical arsenal.

Mr. Assad did not specify his mistakes, at least not in early excerpts released by the magazine, and he toughened his position in some ways, appearing to rule out negotiations with the armed opposition. But Mr. Jamil, one of two ministers from officially tolerated opposition parties appointed during the crisis, spent much of a 90-minute interview last week offering a detailed critique of the government, including the security forces.