NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Somalia’s prime minister says he will defy the president and seek parliamentary approval for a Cabinet that already has been rejected, threatening to deepen the country’s political crisis.

Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said the president has not given any reason for rejecting the Cabinet list and so Hussein plans to directly seek parliament’s approval because "the country can’t operate without a government."

"The president is against my attempts to make peace with rebel groups in the country. He undermines all my reconciliation efforts for his personal interests. He acts like a dictator," Hussein said in an interview late Tuesday with The Associated Press in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

A spokesman for Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf was not immediately available for comment.

The failure of Somalia’s top leadership to agree on a Cabinet since August has further weakened a government facing an increasingly confident Islamic insurgency and one of the worst humanitarian crisis in Somalia’s history.