US president Barack Obama has reportedly signed a secret order authorising US support for rebels in Syria.
The reports come as Syrian government forces and rebel fighters continue their battle over the nation's trade hub, Aleppo, where .
Mr Obama has previously stated he is against arming the rebel fighters, but pressure is mounting on the US to do more to end the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
The White House is not commenting on the arrangement, but Reuters says Mr Obama signed the secret order to assist the rebels earlier this year.
It gives the CIA and other agencies permission to provide support to Syrian rebels.
Reuters says the White House has stopped short of giving the rebels weapons, but foreign policy experts have told an influential senate panel the US should be thinking about which Syrian opposition groups to arm.
Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The World Today the conflict is reaching a point where the US needs to step in.
"I think that what we need to do is assess which groups could we arm and should we arm and at what point and make that decision," he said.
"I think that we're actually at that decision given where the conflict is going."
Mr Tabler testified to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which has helped shape the nation's foreign policy for nearly 200 years.
The current chairman on the committee is former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
Mr Kerry says he and his colleagues would agree they are looking at a dangerous and downward spiral in the heart of the Middle East.
"This is our third hearing on Syria publicly, but we've had four classified briefings-slash-hearings," he said.
"One as recently as last night and then last week the Foreign Relations Committee alone had one."
RAND Corporation director and former US assistant secretary of state James Dobbins says the United States should arm the rebels that are most consistent with US interests and its "vision for the future".
He says assistance could also come in the form of financial aide and advice.
But he says providing any assistance is a risky process.
"The opposition, when it begins to win, is probably going to itself perpetuate some atrocities. I think to some degree that is inevitable," he said.
"The answer to that is that it will be even worse if we don't support them. If we stand aside and don't get engaged we can keep our hands clean but the result will probably be an even worse civil conflict."
Lessons from Iraq
The senate committee also heard from Brookings Institution vice president Martin Indyk, who is a former US Ambassador to Israel.
He says the US should have learnt its lessons from Iraq.
"We spent a lot of effort with the outsiders," he said.
"Frankly, it's failed at least so far to unify them, to get them to articulate a clear vision for post al-Assad Syria and it seems impossible.
"We should have learnt from the experience with the externally Iraqi opposition. To get them all to work together in an effective way seems to be a full-on mission, particularly because they're not connected with the people who are doing the fighting."
But Mr Indyk says arming the opposition is not the only option.
The London-born, Australian-educated former ambassador says there is still room for diplomacy.
Battle for Aleppo
While world leaders try to find a way to bring the 16-month conflict to an end, fighting continues across Syria.
Attention has turned in recent weeks to the strategically important town of Aleppo, which could decide the fate of the civil war.
In fighting yesterday, rebels were condemned for executing four men they suspected of being pro-government militia.
Video footage posted to the internet appears to show the rebels executing the four men.
One video shows four men identified as members of the pro-Assad Shabbiha militia being led down a flight of stairs, lined up against a wall, and shot in a hail of small arms fire as onlookers shouted "God is great".
The video suggests the rebels have carried out executions in Aleppo in much the same way as Mr Assad's forces have been accused of acting in Damascus.
Sausan Ghoshen is the spokeswoman for the UN mission in Syria.
She told the BBC she has seen the video, but cannot yet confirm what actually took place.
"As the UN mission here on the ground we have to be able to see something and verify and fact check it," she said.
"We have not yet done so yet but we have seen the same video and we are extremely concerned about the videos that we are seeing but we cannot verify them at this moment."
Obeida Nahas from the Syrian National Council says the actions of a few rebel fighters should not tarnish the uprising.
"We are against atrocities committed in this way and we condemn them and the Syrian national council has been very outspoken and very firm on this," he said.
"Don't forget that we are seeing now the victims trying to get revenge at the torturers or killers."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 20,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March last year. However, there is no way to independently verify the figure.
The United Nations has stopped keeping count of the death toll.
