NATO's chief said Tuesday he hoped Turkey would keep in mind the military alliance's views as it mulls a missile defense deal with China.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen said NATO member Turkey could buy equipment from any source after Ankara raised the possibility of accepting a Chinese bid to build its first long-range anti-missile system.

The European Union agreed Tuesday to restart membership talks with Turkey next month, ending a three-year freeze despite Ankara's crackdown on protests this year.

EU European and foreign affairs ministers meeting in Luxembourg said talks would resume in a fortnight, with an inter-governmental conference to be held in Brussels on November 5.

Turkey's Islamic-rooted government will reduce compulsory military service to 12 months from next year, the deputy prime minister said on Monday.

Around 70,000 conscripts are expected to be discharged early as a result of the decision, which the opposition has criticized as an election tactic ahead of next year's polls.

A Syrian rebel group said Monday that Damascus had failed to free dozens of female detainees who were supposed to have been released from regime jails as part of a weekend hostage exchange involving the nine Lebanese pilgrims and two Turkish pilots.

The Northern Storm brigade, based in the north of Syria, had expected the prisoners' release after they freed the Lebanese men they had kidnapped 17 months ago.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi called for all countries with a stake in war-wracked Syria to participate in planned peace talks in Geneva, during a visit to Iraq on Monday.

"All those with interests and influence in the Syrian affair must participate in the meeting," Brahimi said, when asked at a Baghdad news conference whether countries backing the opposition were welcome at the talks.

Syria's main opposition group has postponed internal meetings to early November as it faces international pressure to attend peace talks with President Bashar Assad's regime, a member told Agence France Presse Monday.

"Our political committee and general assembly meetings in Istanbul have been postponed till the start of November," said National Coalition member Samir Nashar.

Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel and General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim confirmed that a three-way deal that saw the release of nine Lebanese pilgrims and two Turkish pilots will be fully implemented through the liberation of Syrian women detainees.

In remarks to al-Joumhouria newspaper published on Monday, Ibrahim expressed relief at the return of the nine pilgrims home and the release of the two Turkish Airlines pilots.

Lebanese ex-hostage Ali Termos says his Syrian rebel captors moved him 13 times during his 17-month ordeal, constantly stringing him along with the lie that freedom was hours away.

"My nerves were wrecked. I counted that we were moved 13 times, maybe more," he said in his living room, hours after his release and return home late Saturday via Turkey.

The fate of dozens of Syrian women detainees who were to be freed in exchange for nine released Lebanese hostages was unknown on Sunday.

On Saturday, the nine pilgrims kidnapped 17 months ago by rebels in northern Syria were set free, as were two Turkish pilots taken hostage in Beirut in August, as part of an exchange mediated by Lebanese officials and Doha.

Turkish police fired tear gas canisters on students gathered to protest the beginning of controversial works on a road through their university campus in Ankara, an AFP photographer reported.

Security forces shielded workers and diggers as they began uprooting trees in a park on the site of Middle East Technical University (METU) in the Turkish capital on Friday night.