Assad says Turkey will pay heavily for backing Syrian rebels -...

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Syrian President Bashar Assad said it's still too early to say whether he'll run for re-election in next year's presidential vote.

Assad said "the picture will be clearer" in the next four to five months because Syria is going though "rapid" changes on the ground.

On another note, the Syrian president told Turkey it will pay a heavy price for backing rebels fighting to oust him, accusing it of harboring "terrorists" along its border who would soon turn against their hosts.

In an interview with Turkey's Halk TV due to be broadcast later on Friday, Assad called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan "bigoted" and said Turkey was allowing terrorists to cross into Syria to attack the army and Syrian civilians.

"It is not possible to put terrorism in your pocket and use it as a card because it is like a scorpion which won't hesitate to sting you at the first opportunity," Assad said, according to a transcript published on Halk TV's website.

Turkey, which shares a 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria and has NATO's second largest deployable military force, is one of Assad's fiercest critics and a staunch supporter of the opposition, although it denies arming the rebels.

It shelters a quarter of the 2 million people who have fled Syria and has often seen the conflict spill across its frontier, responding in kind when mortars and shells fired from Syria have hit its soil.

On the field:

Fighting continued on the outskirts of the Syrian capital on Friday as international inspectors raced to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons stockpile.

Activist video showed rebels using homemade grenades and mortar bombs against government forces in Jobar district of northern Damascus.

In Daraya district, the other side of the capital, plumes of smoke were visible from alleged shelling, according to activists.

The conflict, which is rooted in what began as peaceful protests in March 2011, has laid waste to the countries' cities, shattered its economy and driven more than two million people to seek shelter abroad.

REUTERS/AP