The OPCW's visit to Damascus is the first since the country's dictator Bashar al-Assad was overthrown in December last year. The delegation, led by OPCW chief Fernando Arias, has been received by Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani.
Syria has claimed under al-Assad that it has handed over all chemical weapons after a gas attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in 2013, when 1,400 people were killed. But the OPCW has always suspected that chemical weapons remain in the country.
With a new regime in Syria, one now hopes to be able to empty the stockpiles, after years of delays and obstruction from the Assad regime. The OPCW, however, also has concerns that potential evidence of the existence of chemical weapons may have been destroyed in Israel's bombings of Syrian military facilities.
