ANKARA, July 11: The embattled coalition of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit struggled desperately to avoid almost certain collapse on Thursday as his economy minister quit the government in the footsteps of the foreign minister, only to withdraw his resignation soon after.

The first potentially fatal blow to the shaky government came from Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, 62, who announced his widely-expected departure from both the three-party coalition and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party (DSP).

Within hours, the surprise news broke that the 53-year-old Economy Minister Kemal Dervis — an independent who was brought in last March to drag the country out of a severe economic crisis — had also quit.

But shortly after, Dervis agreed to retract his resignation after President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Ecevit pressured him against such a move, the minister explained in a statement.

If accepted, Dervis would have become the eighth minister to quit the government since Monday and would have minimized the coalition’s chances of survival amid insurmountable divisions between the coalition partners and increased prospects of election ahead of their scheduled date in 2004.—AFP