UN Commissioner's 'Free Lancing' on Syria characterization?

"I have said that as soon as there were more and more defectors threatening to take up arms--I said this in August before the Security Council --there was going to be a civil war," Pillay told a news conference in Geneva Thursday, according to a Reuters report. "At the moment, that's how I am characterizing this."
However, it appears that Pillay's is not yet the official UN line. Shortly after she delivered her remarks, her spokesman walked back the characterization, asserting that Syria is, rather, on the "cusp" of civil war,...
The State Department has likewise shied away from Pillay's characterization, noting that the United States has called on both the Syrian regime and the pro-democracy protesters alike to refrain from violence....
Describing the conflict as a civil war could also complicate the moral and political case that some Western countries have made to apply pressure on the Damascus regime. Washington, for example, would be forced to decide whether to endorse one side's use of violence, while calling for restraint from the regime.
Of course, the United States has faced this dilemma before. Washington and European allies cited the need for humanitarian protection in Libya as a key reason for NATO to intervene on behalf of the anti-Gadhafi rebels there. Indeed, NATO effectively served as air force for armed Libyan rebels fighting to topple the Gadhafi regime.
So far, though, western allies have insisted that NATO has no intention of intervening on a similar basis in Syria--a more strategically sensitive country that neighbors Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel..."