"The signal by the Security Council today is that Syria cannot escape the international community," said Scott Lasensky, a Middle East expert at the US Institute of Peace.

The council voted unanimously on Monday for a resolution demanding Syria cooperate fully with a UN investigation into the murder of Lebanon's former premier Rafiq Hariri.

The text urges Syria to detain suspects and impose a travel ban as well as a freeze on assets of all those designated as suspects in the February slaying of Hariri.

But the sponsors of the resolution, Britain, France and the United States, dropped a reference threatening economic and diplomatic sanctions due to objections from China and Russia.

Instead, the compromise wording threatens unspecified "further action" if Damascus fails to cooperate.

While Syria may have avoided the worst case scenario for the moment, the possibility of sanctions still hangs over Damascus even if the resolution does not say so explicitly, Lewensky and other analysts said.

"I don't think it needs to be stated. They know the threat is there," Lewsensky said.

With London, Paris and Washington having to back away from threatening sanctions to gain support from China and Russia, the final language represented "the best they could do," said Steven Cook, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The UN investigation has been extended until December 15 after the head of the probe, German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, released an initial report.

Based on interviews with 400 witnesses and suspects and numerous documents, the report found senior Syrian security officials were implicated in the car bombing that killed Hariri and 20 others in Beirut.

Syria has denied any role in the murder and has announced its own internal investigation.

Given the report's reliance on circumstantial evidence, the US insistence on sanctions was untenable and had to be dropped, said Murhaf Jouejati, director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University.

The report was "very thin on material evidence and it is a report that does not stand in front of a court of law," Jouejati said.

"Some members were able to block the US attempt to get at the jugular of Syria."

The watered down language may provide Syria with one last chance to defuse the crisis.

"They must cooperate. They have no choice but to cooperate this time," Jouejati said.