Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Saturday said he hoped next week's peace talks with the Islamic movement would help avoid an all-out war in the shattered African nation.
Gedi said the cabinet had agreed to deploy parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Ahmed as the head of the delegation that is due to travel on Sunday or early on Monday to the Arab League-mediated peace talks in Khartoum.
"The Somali government wishes the meeting will have a meaningful conclusion. Somalia is in a very critical condition," Gedi told a press conference here.
The rising influence of the Islamic courts militia, which controls much of southern Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu, has undermined the authority of the government based in Baidoa, a dusty provincial outpost, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north-west of the capital.
"The Islamic courts have turned into a clan party. They are interfering with the freedom of people and also imposing embargo's," Gedi lamented. "The courts are misleading the youth specially statements by calling for a non existent jihad."
In previous rounds of talks, the two foes agreed on a truce and mutual-recognition pact, but both have been violated.
Tension has risen in the Horn of Africa nation in the recent months after Ethiopia deployed troops to protect the government from a feared Islamic advance.
The movement responded by declaring a holy war against Ethiopia, a western neighbour that believes the movement are an unruly bunch of "Jihadists" linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and bent on imposing Sharia law.
The movement deny this, insisting their sole aim is to restore stability in Somalia.
The talks due to open on Monday come as a leaked UN report said that there are about 6,000 to 8,000 Ethiopian and 2,000 Eritrean troops operating inside Somalia and warned of a possible "all-out war" if lasting peace is not restored in the nation of 10 million.
Ethiopia has confirmed it has sent military trainers and advisers to Somalia to help the feeble government face the movement, but denied numerous witness accounts that thousands of its uniformed soldiers are in Somali territory.
Eritrea itself has denied the claims, but rejected the planned deployment of peacekeepers in the lawless nation.
War pundits have warned that Somalia risks becoming a theatre of a proxy war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, bitter foes still at odds over the precise path of their common border.
The soaring tensions and worsening security in south and central Somalia have forced tens of thousands to flee into neighbouring Kenya and added to concerns of widespread conflict.
Somalia has been without a functioning central administration since 1991 and the government, formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004, has been wracked by infighting and its inability to assert control over much of the country.