France on Friday raised concerns Egypt was not moving in the "right direction" after President Mohamed Morsi assumed sweeping powers decried by the opposition.

"After decades of dictatorship... the political and democratic transition cannot take place in a few weeks or a few months.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen sought Friday to reassure Russia over the requested deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey near the border with Syria, saying it would be a "defensive only" measure.

NATO spokesman Carmen Romero said Rasmussen had told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a telephone conversation that such a deployment "would in no way support a no-fly zone or any offensive operations."

Turkey's request to site Patriot missiles on its border with Syria only "complicates" the conflict in the Arab country, Iran's foreign ministry said on Friday.

"Not only does it not help resolve the situation in Syria but it will also aggravate and complicate the situation," ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, quoted on state television.

Two main Kurdish groups have agreed to join forces in a standoff with hundreds of Islamist rebels in northeastern Syria, a Syrian Kurdish representative and an activist said on Friday.

Hundreds of fighters loyal to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) -- which has close ties to Turkey's rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- have been locked in fierce battles with fighters of the jihadist al-Nusra Front and allied Ghuraba al-Sham group in Ras al-Ain on the border with Turkey.

A Syrian bishop on Friday appealed to the international community to prevent the conflict from reaching Jezireh in northeast Syria, saying it was sheltering 400,000 internally displaced people.

"I am launching an SOS so that you will not be able to say tomorrow with diplomatic hypocrisy: 'We didn't know'," Monsignor Behnan Hindo, the Syrian Catholic archbishop of Hassake-Nisibe, said in an appeal seen by AFP.

Four professional and citizen journalists have been killed in Syria in one week at the hands of regular troops, rebels and Kurdish militia, an international media rights watchdog said on Friday.

State television journalist Basel Tawfiq Yousef was shot dead in near his home in southern Damascus on Wednesday, state news agency SANA said, blaming "armed terrorist groups" for his death, using the regime's term for rebels.

The European Union on Friday urged Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to respect the democratic process after he assumed sweeping powers decried by the opposition as dictatorial.

"It is of utmost importance that democratic process be completed in accordance with the commitments undertaken by the Egyptian leadership," a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement.

The number of Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon has reached 127,420 and their numbers in neighboring countries have nearly doubled since the beginning of September, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

"Across the region... the number of Syrian refugees in surrounding countries now stands at 442,256, an increase of more than 213,000 since the beginning of September," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi told supporters on Thursday that Egypt was on the path to "freedom and democracy," a day after he assumed sweeping powers that critics said made him a dictator.

"Political stability, social stability and economic stability are what I want and that is what I am working for," he told an Islamist rally outside the presidential palace.

Turkey's request to NATO for Patriot missiles is "a new act of provocation," Syrian state television quoted a foreign ministry official it did not name as saying on Friday.

Turkey turned to its NATO partners earlier this week to request the deployment of surface-to-air Patriot missiles to protect its troubled border with Syria.