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Protesters outside the Syrian embassy in London - Source: Reuters -
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Russia and China vetoed on Saturday an Arab- and Western-backed resolution at the UN Security Council calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down over his bloody crackdown on a popular uprising.
The setback in diplomatic efforts to defuse the revolt peacefully came after world leaders and Syrian opposition activists accused Assad's forces of killing hundreds of people in a bombardment of the city of Homs, the bloodiest night in 11 months of upheaval in the pivotal Arab country.
The violence prompted Syrians across the world to storm their embassies in Canberra, Cairo, London, Berlin and Kuwait among others.
Shortly before the Security Council voted, US President Barack Obama denounced the "unspeakable assault" on Homs, demanded that Assad leave power immediately and called for UN action against Assad's "relentless brutality".
"Yesterday the Syrian government murdered hundreds of Syrian citizens, including women and children, in Homs through shelling and other indiscriminate violence, and Syrian forces continue to prevent hundreds of injured civilians from seeking medical help," Obama said in a statement.
"Any government that brutalises and massacres its people does not deserve to govern."
He and other Western and Arab leaders put unprecedented pressure on Assad's veto-wielding ally Russia to allow the Security Council to pass a resolution backing an Arab League call for Assad to transfer powers to a deputy.
Apart from Russia and China, the other 13 Security Council members voted in favor of the resolution, which would have said that the council "fully supports" the Arab League plan.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday it had not been possible to work constructively with Russia ahead of the vote, even though military intervention in Syria - fiercely opposed by Moscow - had been absolutely ruled out.
"I thought that there might be some ways to bridge, even at this last moment, a few of the concerns that the Russians had. I offered to work in a constructive manner to do so. That has not been possible," she told reporters at the Munich Security Conference.
After what US officials called "vigorous" talks between Clinton and Lavrov, Moscow announced that its foreign minister would fly to Syria in three days to meet Assad.
Russia's decision to vote against the resolution came after US and European officials rejected a series of Russian amendments to the draft resolution.
Moscow said before the vote that the resolution was not "hopeless", but its wording needed to be altered to avoid "taking sides in a civil war".
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was still possible to reach consensus.
But US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said amendments that Russia had proposed were "unacceptable".
Condemnation
As news of the violence spread, angry crowds of Syrians stormed their country's embassies in Cairo, London, Berlin and Kuwait and protested in other cities.
Syria denied shelling Homs and said Internet video of corpses was staged. It is not possible to verify activist or state media reports as Syria restricts independent media access.
The official Syrian account was disregarded across the globe, where international condemnation was thunderous.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said: "The Syrian authorities have jumped a new hurdle in savagery: the massacre in Homs is a crime against
humanity and those responsible will have to answer for it."
In remarks aimed at Moscow, he said any country that blocked UN action would bear a "heavy responsibility in history".
Video footage on the Internet showed at least eight bodies assembled in a room, one of them with the top half of its head blown off. A voice on the video said the bombardment was continuing as the footage was filmed.
Syria's state news agency SANA denied Homs was shelled, accusing rebels of killing people and presenting them as casualties for propaganda purposes before the UN vote.
"The corpses displayed by some channels of incitement are martyrs, citizens kidnapped, killed and photographed by armed terrorist groups as if they are victims of the supposed shelling," it quoted a "media source" as saying.
The Syrian government says it is facing a foreign-backed insurgency and that most of the dead have been its troops. SANA reported funerals of 22 members of the security forces.
Some Syrian activists said the violence was triggered by a wave of army defections in Homs, a stronghold of protests.
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