UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, meanwhile, said he expects a complete withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon before a legislative election is held, according to his spokesman in New York, Fred Eckhard.

A senior Lebanese military officer said Syrian forces -- troops and intelligence agents -- had now abandoned positions in north Lebanon and in the mountains above Beirut and were for the most past concentrated in the eastern Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border.

He said the redeployment covered 8,000 troops, half of whom had crossed the border into Syria itself.

The account suggests that Syria has fulfilled a commitment made to the United Nations ahead of schedule.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, acting in the face of mounting Lebanese and international pressure, last weekend gave a pledge to a UN envoy to relocate his military forces to the Bekaa Valley by the end of March.

After a briefing from his envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, "the Secretary-General said that he expects the full withdrawal of all Syrian troops, including the intelligence apparatus and military assets, to take place before the Lebanese parliamentary elections," spokesman Eckhard said.

Back in Lebanon, the Lebanese officer said nearly all Syria's remaining troops were in the Bekaa, apart from those remaining on the Baidar Pass that controls access to the valley.

Syria had an estimated 14,000 soldiers in Lebanon when the redeployment began on March 7.

A second phase of the withdrawal affecting the remaining 10,000 troops is to be worked out in a meeting in early April of a Syrian-Lebanese military commission, with the pullout to be completed before Lebanese parliamentary elections, according to Beirut press reports.

The vote in principle will take place by May 31.

As Syria's military dominance waned, more vestiges of its presence in Lebanon were being swept away.

Lebanese soldiers in the northern region of Akkar early Thursday hauled down bronze statues of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father, the late Syrian strongman Hafez al-Assad, police said.

Syrian troops entered Lebanon in 1976 to act as a buffer between warring factions near the start of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.

Momentum to get them out intensified following the February 14 assassination in Beirut of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, blamed by the Lebanese opposition on Lebanese and Syrian intelligence, despite denials from Damascus.

Lebanon's top security officer launched a counter-attack on Thursday against accusations of his involvement in the assassination, vowing to back an investigation that would spare no-one.

General Jamil Sayyed told a press conference in Beirut that he would even ask that a suit be brought against himself in order to establish the truth.

The general also went on the offensive against Lebanon's political circles, without giving names, slamming them for "their past crimes, their corruption and the mafias they lead".

Hariri's assassination plunged Lebanon into political turmoil, serving to exacerbate friction between the pro-Syrian Lebanese government and the fiercely anti-Syrian opposition.

Prime Minister-designate Omar Karameh, a Syrian loyalist, has so far made no headway in his bid to persuade anti-Syrian opposition deputies to join a government of national unity, leaving a standoff that threatens the parliamentary elections.

The political stalemate in Beirut threatens parliamentary elections that should in principle take place by May 31, notably if a government is not in place by the end of March.

Under these circumstances the vote could be postponed and the mandate of the current parliament, which ends in June, extended by six months to a year.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.