BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar Assad said he regrets the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces, and that he will not allow tensions between the two neighbors to deteriorate into an "armed conflict," a Turkish newspaper reported Tuesday.
Syria downed the RF-4E warplane on June 22. Syria says it hit the aircraft after flew very low inside its airspace, while Turkey says the jet was hit in international airspace after it briefly strayed into Syria.
In an interview with the Cumhuriyet daily, Assad offered no apology, insisting that the plane was shot down over Syria and that his forces acted in self-defense.
He said that the plane was flying in a corridor inside Syrian airspace that had been used by Israeli planes in 2007, when they bombed a building under construction in northern Syria. The UN nuclear agency has said that the building was a nearly finished reactor meant to produce plutonium, which can be used to arm nuclear warheads.
"The plane was using the same corridor used by Israeli planes three times in the past," Assad told Cumhuriyet. "Soldiers shot it down because we did not see it on our radars and we were not informed about it."
"I say 100 percent, I wish we did not shoot it down,"Assad said.
Commenting for the first time on a U.N.-brokered plan for a political transition in Syria that was adopted by world powers at a conference in Geneva on Saturday, Assad said he was "pleased" that the decision about Syria's future was left to its people.
The plan calls for the creation of a transitional government with full executive powers in Syria. But at Russia's insistence, the compromise left the door open to Assad being part of the interim administration and left its composition entirely up to the "mutual consent" of the Assad administration and its opponents.
"The Syrian people will decide on everything," Assad said.
The conflict in Syria has killed more than 14,000 people since the revolt began in March 2011, according to opposition estimates. The fighting has grown increasingly militarized in recent months, with rebel forces launching attacks and ambushes on regime targets.