"The prospects of dissolution are more finely balanced than many people think," an Islamabad-based Western diplomat told AFP.

"Musharraf is facing ridiculous opposition from all over the place. He's getting bogged down in detail.

"His vision is evaporating. He's spending all his time running trench warfare."

Other analysts say Musharraf is more likely to use the courts to curb the opposition, pointing to a challenge in the supreme court against the academic qualifications of mainly Islamist opposition MPs that could see them unseated.

Since October elections, which restored the first parliament since General Musharraf's 1999 coup and were supposed to end his three year military rule, only one piece of legislation has been passed: the national budget.

A loose alliance of secular and Islamic opposition parties are waging a bitter campaign to force him to surrender self-appointed power and his simultaneous post as army chief.

Most sessions of the 342-seat parliament, in which the pro-Musharraf coalition holds a slender majority, have descended into theatrics of shouts, slow chants, desk-slapping and foot-stomping by opposition MPs, forcing countless sessions to be abandoned.

The budget was only tabled on June 7 over a din of cantankerous opposition protests.

Twice last month the chamber was beset with hours of pandemonium, and the opposition is even pushing ahead with a no-confidence motion this Saturday on the parliament's deputy speaker after boycotting their own earlier motion against the chief speaker.

"He's more likely thinking of dissolution than he was a month ago. The budget session underscored that parliament is not working," the diplomat said.

"Musharraf is now staring down the barrel of an eight-month-old parliament, with no legislation passed except budget, no legislative agenda on the horizon, and no bills in progress.

"He's becoming increasingly frustrated, he can't do anything with his reform agenda... he's being forced to trade off a lot of what he wants to do in terms of modernising and moderating Islam."

The supreme court challenge, sponsored privately by a lawyer, is most widely considered Musharraf's best alternative to avoiding the trauma of sacking the parliament, and the most effective means of wrenching compromise from Islamic parties, the most serious opposition force.