BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said he regrets the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces, and he will not allow tensions between the two neighbors to deteriorate into an “armed conflict,” a Turkish newspaper reported today.

Syria downed the RF-4E warplane on June 22, after according to Syria it flew very low inside its airspace. Turkey says the jet was hit in international airspace after it briefly strayed into Syria.

Assad offered no apology for the downing of the plane during an interview with Cumhuriyet on Sunday, insisting that it was shot down over Syria, and 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 U.N. nuclear agency has said that the building was a nearly finished reactor meant to produce plutonium, which can be used to arm nuclear warheads.