Syria facing 'catastrophic assault from opposition' - Telegraph.co.uk

He said: "Evidently, we have not succeeded. And maybe there is no guarantee that we will succeed."

Mr Annan said the Western use of the UN reso to promote Libya's rebellion "created a problem," because, "the Russians and the Chinese feel they were duped: they adopted a UN resolution transformed into a process for regime change".

There was no sign the regime was backing down yesterday as its navy staged live fire exercises, launching missiles from both sea and land to "simulate the scenario of repelling a sudden attack from the sea,"

He hoped to restore the calm of April 12th, when the violence appeared to stop. "I couldn't believe it," he said. "I turned on the television and saw that al-Jazeera announced everything was calm. If it was possible for one day, why not for a month? Why not once more?"

He said that if the situation improves, (UN) observers "will be ready to go back to work." Asked why no deadline was agreed upon for the creation of a political transition in Syria, potentially buying time for Assad's regime, he said, "we wanted to underline that the process needed to be led by the Syrians themselves. We didn't want to impose anything, nothing unrealistic." Mr Annan said a key objective of the Geneva meeting on June 30th, had been to get nations to pressure Syria – notably with Russia's help.

However, Iran's potential contribution to peace should also be taken seriously, he said. "Iran is an actor. It should be part of the solution. It has influence and we can't ignore it," Mr Annan said, adding he was "struck" by the fact that while "comments are made about Russia, Iran is mentioned less," in addition to other countries supporting the Syrian regime – a fact he said "irritates the Russians a lot."

"All these countries claim to want a peaceful solution, but they take individual and collective initiatives that undermine the very meaning of the Security Council resolutions," he said.