BEIRUT - Arab League chief Amr Mussa continued his efforts on Thursday to break Lebanon's presidential deadlock by setting up a face-to-face meeting between rival political leaders.

A high-ranking official close to the opposition told AFP that Mussa, who has been holding marathon talks with Lebanese officials since his arrival on Wednesday, would host a meeting later on Thursday between majority leader Saad Hariri and Michel Aoun, a key member of the opposition.

"If the meeting is successful it could lead to the election of a president on Monday," said the official, referring to a January 21 parliamentary session scheduled to try for the 13th time to elect a new president.

The opposition official spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.

Lebanon has been without a head of state since Emile Lahoud stepped down last November 23 with no elected successor because of a long-running dispute between the Western-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition.

Mussa held talks with rival leaders last week on an Arab initiative to end the stalemate but left Beirut empty-handed. He returned on Wednesday hoping for a breakthrough and was due to travel to Syria late on Thursday for talks with officials there.

Syria, which held sway in Lebanon until it was forced to withdraw its troops from the country in 2005, has been accused by Washington and its allies of standing in the way of a solution to the current political crisis.

A three-point Arab League plan being touted by Mussa calls for the election of army chief General Michel Sleiman as president, a national unity government in which no one party has veto power and the adoption of a new electoral law.

Although the ruling coalition has given the Arab plan its full backing, Hezbollah insists that the opposition be granted a third of the seats in a new government so it can have veto power.

The official close to the opposition said that if Mussa fails in his latest mission to broker an accord Monday's parliament session to elect a president will probably be cancelled -- as happened with 12 previous sessions.

Mussa's visit comes amid high tension in Lebanon following a car bomb attack on Tuesday against a US embassy vehicle that left three people dead and more than two dozen wounded. -AFP