Clinton accuses Russia over Syria

illary Clinton's comments came after Russia and China renewed opposition to tougher UN Security Council action.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has repeated a warning that Syria could be moving towards "catastrophic" civil war, in the wake of the Houla massacre.

Rebel commanders are split on whether to abandon a ceasefire if Syrian forces do not withdraw to barracks, Kazinform has learnt from BBC News.

The FSA's Colonel Qassim Saadeddine in Homs said that if there was no government response by Friday lunchtime the FSA would consider itself "no longer bound" by the plan.

But the FSA head, General Riyad Asaad, later denied the deadline existed.

Instead, he urged peace envoy Kofi Annan to issue a statement declaring his peace plan to have failed.

The BBC's Paul Wood, who has just returned from three weeks inside Syria, says there is no ceasefire holding on the ground.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has come under intensified pressure to adhere to the ceasefire plan since the Houla massacre, in which more than 100 people - many of them children - died.

Mrs Clinton, speaking on a visit to Denmark, said the case for military intervention was growing stronger every day.

"[The Russians] are telling me they don't want to see a civil war. I have been telling them their policy is going to help to contribute to a civil war," she told an audience in Copenhagen.

Mr Ban, speaking at a conference in Turkey, said UN monitors had not been sent to Syria "just to bear witness to the slaughter of innocents".

"We are not there to play the role of passive observer to unspeakable atrocities," he said.

"The massacre of civilians of the sort seen last weekend could plunge Syria into catastrophic civil war - a civil war from which the country would never recover."

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