Syria’s Information Minister Zohbi says President Assad will remain...

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An advance group of international inspectors arrived in Syria on Tuesday to begin the ambitious task of overseeing the destruction of President Bashar Assad's chemical weapons program.

Twenty inspectors from a Netherlands-based chemical weapons watchdog crossed into Syria from neighboring Lebanon on their way to Damascus, to begin their complex mission of finding, dismantling and ultimately destroying an estimated 1,000-ton chemical arsenal.

The experts have about nine months to complete the task, which has been endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for Syria's chemical stockpile to be eliminated by mid-2014.

It is the shortest deadline that experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have ever faced in any nation, and their first mission in a country at war.

Upon arrival in Damascus, the inspectors are expected to meet with Foreign Ministry officials later Tuesday.

Experts at The Hague, where the OPCW is based, said Sunday the inspectors' priority is to achieve the first milestone of helping Syria scrap its ability to manufacture chemical weapons by a Nov. 1 deadline, using every means possible.

That may include smashing mixing equipment with sledgehammers, blowing up delivery missiles, driving tanks over empty shells or filling them with concrete, and running machines without lubricant so they seize up and become inoperable.

Some of the inspectors will be double-checking Syria's initial disclosure of what weapons and chemical precursors it has and where they are located. Others will begin planning the logistics for visits to every location where chemicals or weapons are stored.

Within a week, a second group of inspectors is scheduled to arrive fewer than 100 combined and form teams that will fan out to individual sites.

Their routes are secret both for their safety and because Syria has the right not to reveal its military secrets, including base locations.

On another note, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that it is unclear whether Western nations will be able to bring representatives of the Syrian opposition to a planned international peace conference by a target date of mid-November.

Syria's pledge to abandon its chemical arsenal has rekindled hopes that an international conference proposed by Russia and the United States in May could materialize, and U.N. Security Council powers hope it can be held in mid-November.

International efforts to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles will shift into high gear on Tuesday while Damascus is refusing to hold contacts with the main Western-backed opposition group in a blow to US-Russian efforts to hold a peace conference by November.

For his part, Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi said Syria's President Bashar al-Assad will remain in office, and has the right to decide to run for reelection next year.

"Syria is staying put: the state, the nation, the people and the president. This is the Syrians' choice," Zohbi told journalists.

In Tuesday's speech, Zohbi said the opposition "does not have the courage to go to the polls", and that "had it had the courage, we would not have reached this point".

Separately, in a rebel held village in Syria's northern Idlib province, some two hundred children returned to school last week to resume their lessons a year after violence forced their school to close its doors.

According to the United Nations, some two million people have fled Syria since the uprising against President Bashar Assad erupted in March 2011, many of them children.

Over that time, more than four million Syrians have also been internally displaced within the country.

The United Nations says that more than a hundred thousand people have died in the violence.

On the field:

China said a mortar shell that landed within its embassy compound in Syria's capital has slightly injured a Syrian employee and caused slight damage to the property.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei also said Tuesday that "China is shocked at the attack and strongly condemns" it.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene of the attack Monday in Damascus said the shell also set two cars on fire. The attack came days after shells hit the Iraqi and Russian missions in central Damascus. The governments of China, Russia and Iraq are strong backers of Assad's government.

Hong said that China urges all parties in Syria to halt violence and start talks on restoring peace.

LBCI/AP/REUTERS

Syria’s Information Minister Zohbi says President Assad will remain in office