The White House on Thursday stressed the "urgent need" to pressure Syrian President Bashar al- Assad to start a political transition in the Arab country, warning that a prolonged standoff will result in more bloodshed or even a civil war.
"The president and others have made clear that the window of opportunity here to allow for a peaceful political transition will not remain open for long," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing.
"There is an urgent need for the international community to come together and further unify against the Assad regime in an effort to persuade the Assad regime and pressure and isolate the Assad regime to the point where that transition is allowed to fully take place," he said.
The spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama warned that without firm action, there will be "more violence, violence that spills over Syria's borders," or even a "proxy war" involving Iran.
Right now, the White House still sticks to its position of no military intervention in Syria, for fear that such a move would only lead to "greater chaos, greater carnage," as Carney put it on Wednesday.
Washington has been deeply doubtful that aerial bombings can topple the Assad regime quickly with small civilian casualties. The Obama administration has also been concerned that arming the opposition, which may include the al-Qaida elements, would empower the Islamist extremists in Syria or even ignite a civil war.
At Thursday's briefing, Carney admitted that "as mighty as the United States is, we cannot end all atrocities around the globe."
He said Washington has to make sure that it is not taking actions that "create unintended consequences that are bad for the United States and bad, in some cases, for the very people you're trying to help."
But meanwhile, the Obama administration are now faced with mounting pressure to take more aggressive actions to bring down the Assad regime, following a massacre in the Syrian village of Houla that left more than 100 people dead.
On Thursday in Denmark, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was trying hard to push Russia to come aboard with the Western powers in toppling the Assad regime.
"What the Obama administration is going to do is trying to weaken the (Assad) regime even further," Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, told Xinhua. "Only some kind of sense from the Russians that the (Assad) regime is going down will change their mind."
"We are headed toward some kind of intervention," he said, citing the potential options of arming the Syrian opposition, a safe zone in Turkey and a humanitarian corridor within Syria.
