Annan Blames Syria for Peace Plan Failure International envoy Kofi Annan warned Thursday that Syria is drifting toward full-blown civil war and blamed the failure of his peace plan primarily on President Bashar Assad's government. He urged the divided U.N. Security Council to threaten "consequences" if Assad doesn't stop the violence. Increasingly impatient with the Syrian regime, Annan confirmed for the first time that his six-point plan is not being implemented. He said it's now time for the U.N.'s most powerful body and the wider international community to step up the pressure to ensure its implementation or start discussing other options to stop the bloodshed. Annan spoke amid dire signs that diplomatic efforts to end the conflict are failing: U.N. observers came under fire Thursday as they tried to reach the site of the latest reported mass killing in Syria - about 80 people, including women and children who were shot or stabbed. Adding to concern about the unarmed observers, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council that U.N. patrols in Syria have been regularly obstructed and in some cases deliberately targeted, citing examples where a heavy weapon, armor-piercing ammunition, and a surveillance drone were used, a senior U.N. official said. Annan, the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy, urged the Security Council to make clear that there will be "consequences" - usually code for sanctions - if his peace plan is not fully implemented. "Clearly, the time has come to determine what more can be done to secure implementation of the plan," Annan said. We must also chart a clearer course for a peaceful transition, if we are to help the government and opposition, as well as Syrian society, to help resolve the crisis. In a sign of increasing global concern at the escalating Syrian conflict, Annan, Ban and Arab League Secretary-General Nabil ElAraby addressed an open meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in the morning and spent three hours behind closed doors with the Security Council in the afternoon discussing how to get the Syrian government to implement the Annan plan. "It is up to the Security Council to take action now," ElAraby told reporters. The message from Arab nations is that the U.N.'s most powerful body should impose nonmilitary sanctions against Syria, which has been suspended from the organization, he said. The U.S. and its European allies have tried unsuccessfully for months to threaten sanctions against Syria as the death toll has risen. But Russia and China, Syria's main allies, vetoed two Security Council resolutions that threatened possible sanctions, and they indicated their continuing opposition in a joint statement after a summit in Beijing on Wednesday. The statement also opposed any outside military interference or forceful imposition of "regime change" in Syria. Nonetheless, Britain's U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said it was time to try to adopt a new U.N. resolution "with clear time lines for sanctions in the event of non-compliance." Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters that the Syrian government hasn't complied with all provisions in the Annan plan but there have been "encouraging developments" including an agreement to allow in humanitarian agencies. He accused the armed opposition of not only failing to comply with the Annan plan but declaring their intention not to do so, which he called "a very dangerous development."