Britain and America came close to writing off the United Nations peace plan for Syria on Thursday after the latest massacre of as many as 78 villagers triggered international outrage.
Graffiti sprayed on the back of a United Nations vehicle reading in Arabic 'Down with Bashar' referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
A man carries a child and a sack representing a dead body during a demonstration against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Binsh near Idlib, Syria
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The bloodshed in Qubeir on Wednesday night bore a strong resemblance to the mass killing of 108 Sunnis in the town of Houla on 25 May, which prompted 13 states, including Britain, to register their revulsion by expelling Syrian diplomats. A further incident would, said officials, cause the international community to review its entire approach towards handling the conflict, based on a peace plan devised by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, yesterday declared that this proposal was "not working" and urged President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to surrender power and go into exile after the "unconscionable" killings. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said that Mr Annan's proposals had "clearly failed so far".
Yet both ministers carefully refrained from saying that the Annan plan, which commands general international support, was categorically dead. Russia and China, Mr Assad's leading allies on the Security Council, both back the proposals. Britain and America do not want to be blamed for prematurely abandoning them.
"We think it is important for us to give Kofi Annan and his plan the last amount of support that we can muster because, in order to bring others into a frame of mind to take action in the Security Council, there has to be a final recognition that it's not working," said Mrs Clinton.
Mr Hague echoed this message, saying: "Time is not yet at an end; it's clearly running out."
As footage of dead infants and young children filtered out of Qubeir, Mr Annan addressed the Security Council in New York and did his best to salvage his initiative. "I must be frank and confirm that the plan is not being implemented," he said, adding that unless the proposals were observed "the future of Syria will be one of massacres, sectarian violence and all out civil war. All Syrians will lose."
In what appeared to be a direct appeal to Russia and China, Mr Annan added: "We must find the will, the common ground to act and act as one. Individual actions or interventions will not resolve the crisis. And as we demand compliance with international law and the six-point plan, it must be made clear that there will be consequences if compliance is not forthcoming. For the sake of the Syrian people who are living through this nightmare, the international community must come together and act as one."
Mr Annan said that he met Mr Assad in Damascus last week and the Syrian president had blamed his enemies for the violence. However, Mr Annan signalled his unease with that explanation, saying: "The first responsibility lies with the government…The government-backed militia seems to have a free rein, with appalling consequences."
Mr Annan noted that the latest atrocity had taken place "just two weeks after the massacre in Houla that shocked the world", adding: "Those responsible for perpetrating these crimes must be held to account. We cannot allow mass killing to become part of everyday reality in Syria."
But Bashar Jaafari, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, responded by telling the Security Council that "terrorists", not allies of the government, had carried out the Qubeir massacre.
He claimed that government troops had tried to intervene to save civilians and four were wounded in the attempt.
Mr Jaafari also accused news organisations, including the BBC, of broadcasting images of bodies from an entirely different location. Syrian state television would, he said, release the "true images" in due course.
Earlier Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, said that UN observers were shot at when they tried to reach Qubeir to piece together the truth of the atrocity. The impotence of the 300-man mission, set up to monitor a persistently-violated truce supposedly agreed under the Annan plan, has become apparent. As well as being shot at, the observers were blocked from reaching the scene of the killings by the Syrian army.
Mr Ban appeared to lay the blame on the regime, saying the killings happened when the hamlet was surrounded by government forces. "The trail of blood leads back to those responsible," he said. "Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity."
David Cameron, the Prime Minister, called the massacre "brutal and sickening", saying: "We need to do much more to isolate Syria, to isolate the regime, to put the pressure in and to demonstrate that the whole world wants to see a political transition from this illegitimate regime."
But Western nations have very few options for resolving the crisis. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, warned: "There will not be a Security Council mandate for outside intervention. I guarantee you that."