Somalia's powerful Islamists said on Tuesday they would not attend peace talks with the interim government until Ethiopian troops left their soil.
The fragile interim government had earlier agreed to the talks in Sudan, responding to a UN drive to avert war in the Horn of Africa country.
"We will go to Khartoum without any preconditions," said Abdirizak Adam, interim President Abdullahi Yusuf's chief of staff, after meeting a senior UN envoy in the government's base in the provincial town of Baidoa.
From their stronghold in the capital, the Islamists had said in a statement they were committed to the talks, but their main leader later dashed hopes for progress.
"As long as Ethiopia is in our country, talks with the government cannot go ahead," Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told foreign correspondents in Mogadishu.
"If the government cares about the Somalis, it should remove our enemy from the country."
Previous talks to prevent a standoff between the two sides from spiralling into war broke down on July 22, when the Islamists pulled out because of what they said was an incursion into Somalia by Ethiopian troops to defend the interim government.
Addis Ababa backs Yusuf and says the Islamists are terrorists. It has intervened in Somalia in the past to attack radical Islamists near its border.
Somali legislators yesterday urged Ethiopian troops to leave their country, in a first recognition by the Horn of Africa's interim authorities of a military incursion by its neighbor.