Against the background of continued and escalating violence in and around Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad was only stating the obvious on 26 June when he told his new cabinet that "we live in a real state of war from all angles."  This was confirmed on the same day by UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, who said that the violence was preventing the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), from resuming  the  operations it suspended  on 16 June.  "The  ongoing  violence  continues  to  prevent  UNSMIS from  carrying  out  its  mandated  tasks  to  monitor  and  report on the  cessation  of  violence and support implementation of the other aspects of the six-point plan," he told the Security Council on 26 June, adding that "the  mission is still observing ongoing military operations in and around our team sites.

With Syria slipping ever closer to the edge of civil war and his six-point peace plan on life support, if not formally declared dead, international mediator Kofi Annan has evidently decided it is time to try another approach, and on 27 June his deputy Jean-Marc Guehenno announced that the UN/Arab League envoy was seeking a "common position on the proposed outcomes" of a meeting of an "action group on Syria" which is to convene in Geneva on 30 June. According to reports, Mr Annan has invited the five permanent members of the Security Council, the EU, Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar to attend, meaning that Saudi Arabia and Iran have been left out (presumably as a trade-off between the US and Russia.) What the purpose of the meeting would be is less clear.

One widely cited report by Reuters quotes an anonymous diplomat as saying on 27 June that it would be to establish "a transitional national unity government to create a neutral backdrop for transition" and that this body "could comprise present government members, opposition and others, but would need to exclude those whose continued participation or presence would jeopardize the transition's credibility or harm prospects for reconciliation and stability" – a clear reference to Mr Asad. The report also quotes the diplomat as saying that the Russians – who have agreed to participate in the Geneva meeting – "signalled to Annan that they accept his transition plan," and if this were true it would represent an evolution, if not a distinct shift, in the Russian position.

However, the next day Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated that "the meeting in Geneva was intended to support Kofi Annan's plan and it must set the conditions for the end of violence and the start of an all-Syrian national dialogue and not predetermine the contents of this dialogue." On the same day an executive member of the opposition Syrian National Council, Samir Nashar, took a diametrically opposed position, saying that Mr Annan's proposal "is still murky to us but I can tell you that if it does not clearly state that Asad must step down, it will be unacceptable to us."

Caught between these conflicting demands, Mr Annan's attempt to salvage a "transition" from the wreckage of his original six-point peace plan faces a future which looks at best uncertain. And when Mr Asad declared in an interview on 28 June that the government had "a responsibility to annihilate terrorists in any corner of the country" and that "we will not accept any non-Syrian, non-national model, whether it comes from big countries or friendly countries. No one knows how to solve Syria's problems as well as we do," it sounded very much like the last nail in the coffin of the action group, if not of Mr Annan's entire peace plan.