SOMALIA: The Muslim day of prayer yesterday brought a brief respite for Somalia's embattled prime minister, Ali Mohamed Gedi, with the resignation of only one minister.
In recent days, he has lost 40 ministers in protest at his decision not to meet leaders of the country's dominant Islamic courts, sending the fledgling government close to collapse.
Residents of Baidoa, the dusty, provincial town where the parliament sits in a disused grain warehouse, said they were prepared to leave if militias linked to the courts moved any closer.
Elsewhere, a spokesman for the US State Department said the government retained international backing even as any remaining support in Somalia appeared to evaporate.
But David Shinn, a former US ambassador to Ethiopia, said the transitional government's position was weakening day by day at a time when the courts - accused of sheltering members of al- Qaeda - were growing stronger.
"I think the TFG can survive but the bigger question is what are its prospects for accomplishing anything - and that doesn't look very good," he said.
The transitional government was formed in neighbouring Kenya in 2004. It is the latest in more than 14 attempts to bring peace to Somalia which has lacked a functioning government since 1991.
Ministers and MPs arrived in Baidoa, some 155 miles north-west of the capital, Mogadishu, in February. Since then they have seen their power reduced to virtually nil by an advancing coalition of Sharia courts, whose militias took control of the capital in June.
Last month the Islamists took up positions only 40 miles from Baidoa, prompting the arrival of Ethiopian troops to shore up the embattled government of president Abdullahi Yusuf, a close ally of Addis Ababa.
Although both sides have since moved back from the brink of war, Baidoa retains the air of a town under siege.
Residents are subject to a curfew and the streets are filled with militiamen carrying AK-47s.
In contrast, the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia plans to reopen Mogadishu's port this month and last week the first commercial flights in more than a decade departed from the city's airport, taking shoppers to Dubai.
Ibrahim Yerow, until Wednesday the assistant minister for national property, said the government had no idea how to respond to the threat posed by the success of the Sharia courts.
"What we need is the prime minister to have a clear policy to deal with moderates in the Islamic courts.
"As a government we have to have our principles and a strategy to talk with them," he said, adding that it was time for the prime minister to resign.
Abdirahman Mohamed Nur Dinari, a spokesman for the government, said Mr Gedi had no intention of throwing in the towel despite narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote last week.
"Instead he is consulting with the MPs who support him and clan elders to replace the ministers who have quit," he said.
While the prime minister and his government is running out of friends at home, Washington moved to reaffirm its international support.
Sean McCormack, US State Department spokesman, said resignations were part and parcel of democracies around the world. "That said, this is a weak institution that we, as well as other members of the Somalia Contact Group, are interested in building up and making more robust."
But that all leaves the residents of Baidoa - some 10,000 or so - wondering whether the presence of an unpopular government makes them targets for the Islamic militias.
"I have a family," said Ibrahim Mohamed Ali (44) as he sipped a drink in the shade of the Bakiin Hotel, "and I will be taking them away from here if it looks like we are returning to the civil war that we hoped we had left behind."