The Somali government has ruled out a quick resumption of talks with rival Islamists as both sides made military preparations.
"The government delegation has refused to set a date and a place," a delegation member said of a plan by mediators to persuade the two sides to continue negotiations in Khartoum, Sudan, on November 15th.
Both sides are blaming each other for the failure of a third round of Arab League-sponsored negotiations seen as the best way to avert a conflict that could widen into a Horn of Africa war by involving foes Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The Islamists, who took Mogadishu and a swathe of the south in June, say they cannot talk while Ethiopian troops are on Somali soil to help President Abdullahi Yusuf's government and have called for an international fact-finding mission.
The government says the Islamists, who have declared jihad on Addis Ababa, want to take Somalia by force and perhaps invade other ethnically Somali regions of neighbouring countries.
The government delegation head, deputy premier Abdullahi Sheikh Ismail, said talks would have "no meaning" unless Islamists withdrew from areas seized since the last discussions.
"The talks should be suspended until they rectify their mistakes," he said.
Somalia has been mired in anarchy since the 1991 ousting of a dictator by warlords. Eritrea, accused of arming the Islamists, and Ethiopia, which backs Mr Yusuf's government, fought a war in 1998-2000 and remain bitter foes.
Despite its military inferiority to the Islamists, the Somali government has Western backing.