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Inspectors start destroying Assad's chemical weapons

Syrian President calls for peace conference and German mediation

United Nations inspectors have began destroying Syria's chemical weapons, boosting calls for a political resolution to the two-year-old conflict.

A UN official speaking anonymously said: "Today is the first day of destruction and disabling" and added that both munitions and weapon-making equipment were due to be smashed.

But there was no inventory of what had been destroyed or where the process took place.

Heavy vehicles are "running over and thus destroying missile warheads, aerial chemical bombs and mobile and static mixing and filling units."

According a UN security council resolution brokered by Russia in September to avoid an impending US assault on the country, the UN team must eliminate Syria's capacity to build chemical weapons by November 1.

The deadline is tough given the raging civil war and the presence of numerous rebel groups which do not recognise the UN's role.

President Bashar al-Assad has renewed calls for a "Geneva II" peace conference to be held in November in an interview with the Tishreen newspaper.

He cited the destruction of the weapons as a symbol of his government's good faith, saying they were "built in the 1990s to fill the technical gap in weaponry between Syria and Israel."

He also appealed to Germany to mediate to end the conflict.

Reports surfaced last week that officers of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a force mostly comprised of Syrian soldiers who switched sides early in the conflict, were conducting secret talks with Damascus about a negotiated solution.

Many secular rebels are said to resent the hijacking of the uprising by foreign Islamist fighters linked to al-Qaida and have become more open to a compromise with the regime.

But an FSA commander identified as "al-Kurdi" vigorously denied the reports and repeated a long-standing demand that Mr Assad step down as a condition of negotiations.

The government holds that no conditions whatever can apply to peace talks, while many of the estimated 300 armed rebel groups in Syria have rejected them out of hand.

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