Turkey cautious about U.S.-Russian deal on Syria

Turkey's foreign ministry has warned that the U.S.-Russia agreement designed to eliminate the chemical weapons in Syria could be exploited by the Assad regime.

In a statement, the ministry said the deal should not be turned into a process that would buy time for Damascus.

It warned that the planned schedule to strip Syria of its chemical weapons was long enough for it to exploit the deal.

It added sanctions in case of Damascus' failure to fulfill its part of the deal must be determined clearly at the beginning.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reiterated his concerns about Syria's use of chemical weapons during a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

He noted that the agreement did not address the urgent need to solve the conflict in Syria.

Davutoglu expressed the same concerns in another phone conversation with his Qatari counterpart Khalid Bin Mohammed Al- Attiya.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov reached an agreement on the framework of destroying Syria's chemical weapons by mid-2014 and imposing UN penalties if Damascus fails to comply, the report added.