The US reiterated on Monday that it does not favor foreign military intervention in Syria at the moment amid lingering speculation that Washington might use force to achieve a regime change in Syria as protracted violence tests the patience of the international community.

"Based on where we are now, based on our continuing concern that foreign military intervention in this situation is not clearly going to save lives and may actually cause a greater explosion of violence for a whole variety of reasons, we are taking the step now to do what we can with the UN monitors," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a regular news briefing.

"The concern has been that putting foreign military forces into this situation, which is on the verge, as everybody has said, of becoming a civil war, will turn it into a proxy war," Nuland added.

She said the "better course of action" is to use all the economic, political and other pressures available to smother support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also said yesterday that international efforts to ease the escalating conflict in Syria were focused on trying to reach a peaceful transition, and that foreign military intervention was not being considered.

The US and its Western allies have been using a recent spike in violence to condemn the Syrian government.

The Syrian government has repeatedly said outside armed terrorists should be blamed for the bloodshed and Damascus has been trying to restore order in the violence-stricken Arab country. "The US administration is pushing forth with its flagrant interference in Syria's internal affairs and its backing of armed terrorist groups," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Obama administration is under pressure to take concrete measures to back up its proclaimed intention to see Assad go, but it remains cautious about launching yet another war in the volatile Middle East in an election year and amid rising concerns of the voters about chronic economic problems.

It is also reluctant to engage in major war efforts in the Middle East while trying to move more military resources to the economically dynamic Asia-Pacific in a crucial strategic shift.

Last month, White House spokesman Jay Carney also said that the White House still stuck to its position of no military intervention in Syria, for fear that such a move would only lead to "greater chaos, greater carnage."

Russia and China, permanent members of the UN Security Council, have reiterated in recent days that they oppose any foreign military intervention in Syria.

Xinhua - Reuters