President Abdullahi Yusuf, whose fledgling government has accused the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC) of close al- Qaida links, said the Islamists have shut the door to peace talks.
"We are no longer under the illusion that peace is possible with the SCIC. They are the ones who are waging the war. I don't see peace and I don't think they want peace," he told reporters at his Baidoa base late Friday.
"If there was something to offer them I would, but I am sure they have no intention for peace and therefore I have nothing to offer them," said Yusuf who is struggling to stamp his authority beyond Baidoa outpost.
The Arab League-mediated reconciliation talks were scheduled to take place next week in Khartoum, but now look doubtful due to counter accusations traded by both sides.
The United Nations and other international bodies have been urging all warring sides in the Somali conflict to pull back from the brink and return to a dialogue about power sharing.
The United States said Thursday the Islamists, which control much of southern and central Somalia, were becoming more radical.
The United States has designated the supreme Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys a "terrorist" and accuses elements in the movement of harboring suspects in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
But Islamic Courts officials said Washington was trying to derail the stability it had brought to much of the lawless nation this year.
"The U.S. government is determined to obstruct the progress of the Islamic Courts in Somalia, but we shall bring Islamic Jihadists here if U.S. troops try to enter our territory" said SCIC' secretary for information Abdirahim Ali Mudey.
The SCIC has so far refused to allow the deployment of an African peacekeeping contingent -- which the UN Security Council has already approved recently -- to protect the fragile Somali transitional government in Baidoa.
Military tension is concentrated around Baidoa, where SCIC militias and government troops have strengthened their positions in view of a possible direct military confrontation.
Regional analysts and diplomats say that a military build-up on both sides makes it less likely that any peacekeepers will be deployed.
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and the two-year- old government has been unable to assert control across the nation of some 10 million.
Source: Xinhua, Dec 17, 2006