New! At the United Nations

"I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs. They twist the feet until the leg breaks"; a description accompanying a video smuggled out of Homs' military hospital. In the video patients are seen wounded, blindfolded, chained to beds. Instruments of torture are shown on a table nearby. The patients themselves look as though they have received severe beatings.

While unable to verify anything as factual, the United Nations is in possession of similar footage. Kofi Annan, dispatched by the United Nations as a special humanitarian interlocutor to Syria has cautioned the international community that it must not intervene militarily. To leave it to the United Nations - himself, at this time - to continue talks with the Arab League and with Syria, to enable all concerned to come to an amicable settlement.

The International Red Cross, it seems, is still patiently awaiting cooperation from President al-Assad, to enable them to begin distributing aid to the desperate people of Homs, particularly in the devastated areas of Baba Amr. Residents who have fled in their thousands have reported bodies decomposing under destroyed buildings - along with a campaign of arrests and executions.

The regime's military has now pulled back from Baba Amr, and there are fears that another launch of yet another devastating round of bombs and artillery may now proceed,burying whoever is left alone - whom the military did not discover as they searched building to building, house to house, to arrest males over 14, and occasionally stop to rape girls and murder them and their families - to destroy all human existence there.

Ah, but just a rumour, one of so many.

"They are cleansing the neighbourhood, they are robbing houses, arresting people then executing some. Baba Amr is besieged from all sides. It is a disaster. They said they have a list of 1,500 men and they want them all.... They are shooting everything that is moving, even animals."

Valerie Amos, currently visiting Syria as the UN's humanitarian chief, spoke of the Baba Amr district of Homs as completely devastated, almost devoid of people. "She [Amos] said that security was obviously an issue and they heard gunfire while they were there. The parts of Baba Amr that they saw, she said they were pretty devastated."

Syria's national news agency had handout photographs of neatly lined up weaponry which it is claimed the military liberated from the hands of Homs rebel groups. Supplied, of course, by foreign interests and by terrorists. A handful of Western diplomats, speaking anonymously, informed Reuters they felt convinced Damascus had "finished the job" of punishing Homs before permitting Ms. Amos to visit.

As for the United Nations, which has pleaded with President al-Assad to negotiate, to order his troops to stop firing on protesters, their cultural agency UNESCO is considering a move to condemn Syria. And while the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization will tch-tch Syria, it has no intention of expelling it from its place on its human rights committee, if their draft resolution is to be trusted.

The resolution, submitted by a number of countries including Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Britain and Denmark does condemn Damascus for "the continued widespread and systematic violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities". But though a group of Western and Arab nations pushed for Syria's expulsion, it is set to remain on two panels of UNESCO, including one that judges human rights violations.

So what else is new at the United Nations?