FOREIGN Secretary William Hague said international efforts to ease the escalating conflict in Syria were focused on trying to reach a peaceful transition and that foreign military intervention was not being considered.

"We are not looking for any foreign military intervention. I think we should not think about it in terms of another Libya," he told a news conference in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

"All our efforts are going into supporting a peaceful transition in Syria, and a peaceful solution," said Mr Hague, in a press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.

"If there is any violent solution, it would clearly involve many more deaths and a great deal of hardship for the Syrian people."

Mr Hague's comments came as it emerged an international "contact group" will meet soon to discuss how to make Syria's Government and opposition groups abide by a peace plan brokered by Kofi Annan.

"The objective of creating this group is to give teeth to the plan, to convince the parties to implement the plan in its entirety. It is not to create a new plan," Mr Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told a UN media briefing. The contact group meeting has been in doubt because of US opposition to Iran's involvement.

Iran, along with Russia and China, which both blocked UN Security Council efforts to put pressure on Syria, backs Syria's Government, despite UN human rights investigators accusing it of crimes against humanity.

In Syria yesterday, at least 10 people were killed when Government forces barraged an eastern city with mortar shells as protesters were dispersing, while clashes broke out elsewhere in the country, activists said.

The violence comes as President Bashar Assad's regime faces international pressure over brutal tactics against the opposition, with the UN accusing the Government of using children as young as nine as human shields.