“This crisis cannot remain within Syria’s borders forever,” the joint UN-Arab League envoy said on Wednesday.

“Either it is resolved, he said, or it will spill over and consume everyone.”

Mr. Brahimi was speaking in the capital, Beirut, following a meeting with the country’s President and other senior leaders.

UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky said they discussed the UN Secretary-General’s appeal for a ceasefire in Syria to be initiated by the government and to which the opposition would respond positively.

He added that Mr. Brahimi also reiterated the Secretary-General’s call for all countries that provide arms to the various parties in Syria to stop doing so.

Brahimi said he was visiting Syria’s neighbours to listen to their views on the crisis, adding he would also visit Damascus, but not specifying a date.

Meanwhile, Syria has said it is prepared to explore a truce proposal by international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

But spokesman Jihad Makdissi stressed that the rebels and their backers would also need to be involved.

Arab League chief Nabil El-Arabi, who met Brahimi on Tuesday, backed the truce proposal and asked for international support. Turkey also voiced its support. Iran also backs the idea of a ceasefire, according to Iran’s state news agency.

Fighting continued on Wednesday, with activists reporting clashes in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo as well as outside Damascus, according to Al Jazeera.

Amateur videos posted online showed what activists said was a helicopter shot down by rebel fire near the northern town of Maaret al-Numan.

All international efforts to end Syria’s cconflict to date have failed. Both rebels and government forces have disregarded previous ceasefires.

The Syrian uprising has claimed about 31,000 lives since March last year, according to activists.

“We are sorry that the Arab League has descended to this level concerning a member state of this institution,” he said. “This decision only concerns the Syrian people, who are the sole masters of fate of their governments,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jihad Makdissi said at a media conference on Monday, according to AFP.

“If the Arab nations who met in Doha were honest about wanting to stop the bloodshed they would have stopped supplying arms… they would stop their instigation and propaganda,” he said. “All their statements are hypocritical.”

The Arab League on Monday called on Assad to swiftly give up his powers in order to end the fighting that has swept across the country. A day earlier, the Arab League also urged the rebel Free Syrian Army to form a transitional government of national unity.

“We call on the opposition and the Free Syrian Army to form a government of national unity,” Sheikh Hamad said as he delivered the results of the Arab League meeting.

Meanwhile, a statement by the Foreign Ministry on Monday stressed that Syria’s stance that any chemical or biological weapons will never ever be used during the crisis in Syria notwithstanding the developments inside the country.

A statement by the Ministry, read by spokesman Dr. Jihad Makdissi in a press conference, said that such weapons stocks are secured and directly monitored by the Syrian Armed Forces and would only be used in the case of external aggression on the country,

The statement came as Syrian troops commanded by the brother of President Bashar al-Assad and backed by helicopter gunships have driven rebel fighters out of a district of Damascus a week after the insurgents launched a major assault on the capital, Al Jazeera reported.

Clashes between government focres and rebels have intesified since rebels brought their battle to overthrow Assad to the capital and killed four of the president’s regime members in a bomb attack on a meeting of senior security officials last Wednesday.