Somalia: Somalia's teetering interim government spent the weekend in emergency session debating how to resist an increasingly powerful Islamic movement that has seized swathes of the country during the past month.
The rise of the sharia courts movement, which controls the capital, Mogadishu, has sent shock waves through western governments and regional capitals which fear the emergence of an African Taliban prepared to offer safe haven to al-Qaeda terrorists.
Those fears were strengthened on Saturday with the release of an internet audio message, purportedly from Osama bin Laden - his second in two days. In it, he warns the international community against sending troops to Somalia, and urges Somalis to back the Council of Islamic Courts in its bid to forge a state based on fundamentalist sharia law.
The hardline Muslims claimed nationwide authority last week, further undermining a transitional government which has been meeting in the town of Baidoa, some 144 kilometres from Mogadishu, since February.
Speaking before the emergency meetings, members of the government said they would resist the growing influence of the Council of Islamic Courts.
"We will not accept any group who wants to undermine our government," said Ismail Hurreh, a government official.
Salad Ali Jelle, the government's deputy information minister, said details of how the government would react would be released after the meeting.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, carving much of the country into personal fiefdoms ruled by violence and clan law.
The emergence of an alliance of sharia courts is now the closest thing the country has had to a central authority in 15 years.
The two sides met 10 days ago in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, to agree an immediate truce but since then the government has accused the Islamists of violating the ceasefire and refusing to recognise its legitimacy.
While publicly discounting the possibility of negotiations, sources close to the Somali government said secret talks were under way with Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, one of the key figures in the courts movement. The moderate cleric was seen as its leader until last week when he was replaced by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on the US terrorist watch list as a suspected collaborator with al-Qaeda.
"Sheikh Sharif Ahmed comes from the same clan as the prime minister and as so often in Somalia, it comes down to clan loyalties," said a Nairobi-based Somali analyst.
"There is a feeling in the government that this is a man they might be able to do business with, if Aweys can be kept in the margins.
"He has been losing support among many Somali people, and the statements by bin Laden do not help his cause as no one in Somalia wants to become a target in the war on terror."
The international community has spent the past month wondering which direction the Islamic courts would take.
Their emergence has been greeted with relief by residents of Mogadishu, who welcomed their victory over the warlords, a motley collection of gangsters and thugs who had kept the city in a state of anarchy for 15 years as they profited from protection rackets and organised crime.
But the US in particular fears Somalia could become another Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, a lawless land offering terrorists a base from which to strike.
Washington has accused the Islamic militia of harbouring al-Qaeda leaders responsible for deadly 1998 bombings at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and is widely believed to have been supporting the warlords as a way of keeping the Islamists at bay.
Meanwhile, foreign ministers from the six east African Intergovernmental Authority on Development countries spent the weekend in Nairobi, finalising plans to send a fact-finding mission to Mogadishu in the coming days. It could be the first step to sending an international peacekeeping force to Somalia.