White House: Siding with Assad a mistake UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Siding with Bashar Assad is a mistake because he will be displaced, the White House warned as U.N. envoys were to debate an Arab plan for Syrian regime change. "As governments make decisions about where they stand ... it's important to calculate into your considerations the fact that he will go," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the Syrian president. "The regime has lost control of the country and will eventually fall," Carney said. With Syrian violence sharply escalating, and at least 95 people reported killed Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton supported the Arab League demand Assad step down. She said she would be at the U.N. Security Council Tuesday to back the league when it presents its plan requiring Assad to hand over power to a vice president, who would create a national unity government within two months. Assad has rejected the proposal as "foreign interference." "The Arab League is backing a resolution that calls on the international community to support its ongoing efforts, because the status quo is not acceptable," Clinton said in a statement Monday. The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region. The British and French foreign ministers were to be in New York to support the league plan before the council, their governments said. At least 10 of 15 Security Council members back the Arab measure, France said. Nine are needed for it to go to a vote. Russia will block the move as currently written because it "leaves open the possibility" of foreign military "intervention" in Syria, just as an Arab-backed U.N. measure last year led to NATO airstrikes in Libya, Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told Russia's non-governmental Interfax news agency. The Obama administration is "intensely discussing with the Russians the real deterioration on the ground in Syria," Carney said. "We're discussing with the Russians and other partners how best to use all the levers at the command of the international community and the United Nations to press the Syrian government to stop its appalling and ultimately ineffective and harmful repression," he said. The United Nations, which has said more than 5,400 people have been killed in the nearly 11-month uprising, said last week it could no longer reliably document the death toll. Russia Monday offered to mediate talks between the Assad regime and the opposition. The opposition Syrian National Council, based in Istanbul, Turkey, rejected the offer unless Assad stepped down first -- a condition Assad and Russia have said was unacceptable. SNC executive committee member Haitham Maleh, a former judge who is now an important opposition figure, told the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph Assad had forfeited any chance of a peaceful exit. "Assad and his family will be killed in Syria ... like Gadhafi," he said, referring to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who met a violent and vengeful death Oct. 20, 2011, at the hands of individual members of the Libyan forces that drove him from power.