NAHR AL-BARED, Lebanon, June 20, 2007 (AFP) - A month to the day since Lebanon decided to rid itself of the Al-Qaeda-inspired extremists of Fatah al-Islam, the army said on Wednesday it has seized all militant positions in a part of a besieged refugee camp.

"All of the buildings in the new part of the camp where the terrorists were dug in have been taken, and one could say fighting has stopped in this area," an army officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The new part of the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp is an overspill from the original camp, whose perimeter was fixed by the United Nations and where all the buildings were of one-storey only.

The overspill contains high-rise concrete buildings overlooking the road leading north to the Syrian border, and it is there that diehard Sunni Muslim extremists of Fatah al-Islam have pulled back and are making a last stand.

Wednesday morning saw a lull in the fighting a day after heavy guns pounded suspected militant strongholds in the northern sector of the camp. Three soldiers were killed on Tuesday but Fatah al-Islam casualties were not known.

So far at least 141 people, including 74 soldiers, have been killed in the deadliest internal violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war that comes amid increasing political and security concerns in deeply divided Lebanon.

Apart from the occasional burst of automatic gunfire, the tanks and artillery ranged on high ground overlooking the camp were silent on Wednesday.

"We are advancing metre by metre (yard by yard) and are securing the new camp quarter by quarter becuase of the threat of mines," the army officer said.

The northern part of Nahr al-Bared lining the coast is now a wasteland of shattered concrete skeletons and slabs lying on on top of the other where the military is edging forward, house by house.

Since the weekend the army says it has destroyed or overrun six Fatah al-Islam outposts and has found "the bodies of several armed elements which had been apparently prepared for burial at the abandoned positions."

On Sunday army chief General Sleiman said he foresaw an end to the siege within days.

While the government and the military appear determined to end the standoff by force, Palestinian mediators are continuing to try to negotiate a ceasfire.

Mohammed Hajj, spokesman for mediators attempting to convince the Islamists to surrender, said on Wednesday that "deployment of a Palestinian force between the two sides in the old camp is imperative if the fighting is to end."

He said a meeting with the army was expected later in the day "to fix the details of setting up this force" which would ensure the safety of some 2,000 refugees still inside the camp and prevent remaining militants from escaping.

The military is demanding that Fatah al-Islam surrender, and refuses to enter into face-to-face negotiations.

Both the army and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora have said the battle will continue until the militants are crushed.

"It's an army thing -- they will finish this," one military observer told AFP on Tuesday. "They lost too many people on the first day. Young soldiers killed when they were off duty. The army can't accept that."

Meanwhile, Arab League chief Amr Mussa is in Beirut in a new bid to solve Lebanon's continuing political crisis through dialogue between its anti- and pro-Syrian camps.

Mussa said on Tuesday that he hoped the rival camps will reach an accord despite the problems that have paralysed the government since six pro-Syrian ministers quit last November.

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