Foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said Friday she will maintain the European Union's diplomatic presence in Damascus regardless of decisions taken by member states on their own needs.

"The issue of diplomatic representation in the country is of course under constant review by the member states, but there is no common line at this time," said Ashton's spokesman Michael Mann.

Foreign ministers from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, meeting in Tunis said Friday the Syrian crisis should be resolved in an "Arab framework" and opposed foreign military intervention in the country.

"We are all against military intervention in Syria, and we want the problem to be resolved in an Arab framework," Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem said after meeting with his Egyptian and Libyan counterparts, Mohamed Amr and Ashour bin Khayyal.

The United States said Friday it is concerned about Iranian cargo flights over Iraq to Syria, saying it has warned Iraq they might contain arms that could be used by Damascus to crush protests.

"Without getting into intelligence matters, we are concerned about the overflight of Iraq by Iranian cargo flights headed to Syria," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe urged the Syrian opposition to stop "tearing itself apart" in an interview published on Friday, in which he also opposed providing Syrian rebels with arms.

"There are some opponents whose attitudes are seriously weakening the opposition -- as long as they continue to tear themselves apart and fight amongst themselves," Juppe said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde.

Syria has vowed to cooperate with U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan while combatting "terrorism," its term for the country's anti-regime revolt, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

"The Syrian government is determined to protect its citizens by disarming the terrorists and continues to search for a peaceful solution to the crisis by cooperating with special envoy Kofi Annan," it said in a letter addressed to the United Nations, carried by state news agency SANA.

Turkey on Friday "strongly" urged thousands of Turkish nationals to leave Syria and said it was considering withdrawing its ambassador from the violence-wracked country.

"Developments in Syria pose serious security risks for our nationals," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "Therefore it is strongly recommended that Turkish nationals currently in Syria leave and return home."

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal arrived in Turkey on Friday to meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who advocates cooperation with the Islamist movement, a close aid to the premier said.

"The prime minister will meet with Meshaal at 2:00 pm (1200 GMT)," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Russia said Friday it was using its contacts with the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad to urge Damascus to fully cooperate with the mission of U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.

Speaking ahead of a video conference Annan was to hold with the U.N. in New York later Friday on his mission to find a settlement to the crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said all the U.N. Security Council members had a duty to support his efforts.

Suspected al-Qaida militants have kidnapped a Swiss woman and are holding her in the southeastern province of Shabwa, a provincial official told Agence France Presse on Friday.

"A Swiss woman was abducted in Hodeida (on the Red Sea coast) by armed men who moved her to Shabwa province," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Thousands of anti-regime protesters called on Friday for foreign military intervention to bring down a Syrian government whose brutal crackdown on dissent monitors say has cost more than 9,100 lives.

The protests after Muslim weekly prayers were called by activists on their Facebook page, Syrian Revolution 2011, to demand "immediate military intervention by the Arabs and Muslims, followed by the rest of the world."