Semigroups in symmetric Lie groups

Let G be a Lie group and L C G a Lie subgroup. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a family of cosets of L to generate a subsemigroup with nonempty interior in G. We apply these conditions to symmetric pairs (G, L) where L is a subgroup of G such that Go C L C Gi and r is an involutive automorphism of G. As a consequence we prove that for several r the fixed point group GI is a maximal semigroup.