Syrian forces plan to have virtually wrapped up the operation on the eve of the arrival on Monday of UN teams due to verify the pullout and prepare for a commission probing the killing of ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.

Damascus’s decision to withdraw was made under intense international pressure following the February 14 bomb blast that killed Hariri, and which was blamed by many on the Lebanese regime and its political masters in Syria.

The acceleration of the operation in the last 24 hours came ahead of a report to be presented by UN chief Kofi Annan on Tuesday on the implementation of a resolution calling for an end to foreign troops on Lebanese soil.

“The big bulk of the Syrian forces, including heavy weapons and equipment, will have left by this evening,” a security source told AFP.

“Only a symbolic presence of military and intelligence forces will be maintained for Tuesday’s ceremony to honour the Syrian forces in the presence of the commanders of the Syrian army in Lebanon,” said the source. “The remaining Syrian forces will leave after the ceremony.”

Syria has been the main power broker in neighbouring Lebanon since it first deployed troops there a year after the 1975 outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, and further tightened its grip after the conflict ended in 1990.

Damascus’s control extended through Lebanon’s security services and its allies who tightly controlled political and economic life and were untouchable until recently.

Emboldened by the international pressure on Syria and huge street protests in Beirut since Hariri’s murder, the Lebanese opposition has secured an agreement from the new Prime Minister Nagib Miqati for the departure of top security chiefs and the public prosecutor.

Powerful general security chief General Jamil Sayyed, a central figure of the pro-Syrian regime in the last decade, and internal security forces head General Ali Hajj offered Friday to step aside during the UN probe into Hariri’s killing.

In what was seen as a significant sign of the new political environment, new Interior Minister Hassan Sabaa, a figure close to the opposition, reprimanded Sayyed the next day, apparently over procedural matters.

“The mask of the security regime has fallen. Symbols of the security regime might try to buy extra time or take revenge, but nothing will turn back the clock,” said Samir Qassir, a leading editorialist in the top-selling An-Nahar newspaper.

“The mask did not only fall because Jamil Sayyed decided to step aside, but because there is finally an interior minister who said ’enough’... and because politicians did not remain silent... and journalists untied their tongues,” he said.

Al-Mustaqbal daily accused public prosecutor Adnan Addum of ”putting himself at the service of security services for many long years” by prosecuting anyone opposing the pro-Syrian regime.

MP Bassem Sabaa, a Shia Muslim member of the parliamentary bloc of key opposition leader Druze MP Walid Jumblatt, said Saturday: “When I see a Syrian officer bidding farewell ... I have the right to see a Lebanese officer bidding farewell to political life in Lebanon.”

Change has also been seen on the ground by journalists monitoring the Syrian troops moves and who have recently even been allowed to sit with the feared head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, Brigadier General Rustom Ghazaleh.