A Syrian protest calls for Bashar Al-Assad's ouster at a demonstration in Amman on May 15, 2011.Muhammed Hamed/Reuters
Britain and France will put forward a United Nations Security Council resolution on Wednesday condemning Syria's crackdown on protesters, British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
"Today in New York, Britain and France will be tabling a resolution at the Security Council condemning the repression and demanding accountability and humanitarian access.
"And if anyone votes against that resolution or tries to veto it, that should be on their conscience," Mr. Cameron told parliament.
Britain, France, Germany and Portugal circulated a draft resolution condemning Syria at the UN Security Council last month, but diplomats say Britain has been working on a version with tougher language. Veto powers Russia and China have made clear they dislike the idea of council involvement.
Syria's old Cold War ally Moscow, unhappy about how NATO powers have interpreted a UN resolution authorising military action to protect civilians in Libya, has said it may veto a possible Security Council resolution condemning Damascus.
On Wednesday, Turkey reported that 122 Syrians had fled across the border to escape an expected military crackdown in a northwestern Syrian town where the government has accused "armed gangs" of killing more than 120 security personnel.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan declared that his country would not "close its doors" to Syrian refugees and urged Assad's government to be more tolerant toward civilians.
Small groups of refugees fled earlier to Lebanon when Syrian security forces were suppressing protests in a border town.
Israel and the United States accuse Damascus of promoting Palestinian rallies at the fence dividing Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to divert attention from the challenge to four decades of Assad family rule.
The United States and Britain, unlike France, have stopped just short of proclaiming that Assad has lost all legitimacy. But his ability to control Syria is also in question.
"Assad is finished, but we have to see how this regime will crumble," said Burhan Ghalyoun, a Syrian opposition and academic at the Sorbonne in Paris. "Is it going to crumble from inside, through growing demonstrations, or will the world unite, demand that the killing ends and threaten intervention?"
Despite belated enthusiasm for pro-democracy movements that have unseated leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, no Western leaders -- let alone their autocratic Arab partners -- have shown any appetite to intervene in Syria, an Iranian ally with a volatile ethnic and religious mix lying in a web of regional conflicts.