The Prime Minister has agreed to resign before the elections, but she has not specified when.Nor was it agreed in heated talks between Ms Zia and the three main opposition parties – Ms Hasina’s Awami League, the Islamic fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami party and the Jatiya Party, which backs the deposed former ruler, Hossain Ershad – who should sit in the caretaker cabinet. Ms Zia’s husband was one of the military officers responsible for executing Ms Hasina’s father, Bangladesh’s first leader, before he, too, was killed in an army coup.A corridor for compromise does exist, however. “The Prime Minister has shown utter disrespect for the people’s plea for a clean vote.” The personal animosity between the two women is tangled up with Bangladesh’s post-independencehistory. Bangladesh has been virtually ungovernable since last February, when the opposition began its boycott of parliament, complaining that the 1991 elections that brought Ms Zia’s Bangladesh National Party to power were rigged.”We’ve tried our best but without results,” Ms Hasina told the rally. An eight-hour general strike has been called for today.Ms Zia’s rivals are demanding that she step down before her term ends in 1996 and turn the country over to an impartial caretaker president.

It is still possible that the Prime Minister will accept these ultimatums. Diplomats contacted in Dhaka said the walk-out by opposition MPs could unleash even more riots and street clashes between supporters of the rival politicians. Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the opposition leader, told a rally on the steps of the parliament building in Dhaka, the capital, that she would lead “a fierce campaign to bring down the government”.
Bangladesh has already been crippled by 40 days of strikes and often bloody unrest. Bangladesh was plunged into political crisis yesterday when all 154 opposition MPs resigned, citing the “intransigence” of the Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, who has rejected calls to resign in favour of a neutral interim government. Elsewhere in Bosnia, the ceasefire was generally respected.In Sarajevo, a 61-year-old woman was wounded by sniper fire on Tuesday; yesterday the warring factions traded gunfire across the front line at the Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity near the city centre.General Rose is also negotiating a cessation of hostilities, due to start on New Year’s Day, between Sarajevo and Pale.Whether Mr Abdic – and, more importantly, the Krajina Serbs – feel the same way remains to be seen.But the Muslim tycoon is clearly keen to get back to business: during yesterday’s meeting he asked the UN to transport 9,000 live chickens to Velika Kladusa so that he could kick-start his agro-industrial empire.. Another explained: “The fighting in the north of the [Bihac] pocket is principally a Krajina Serb operation.”Yesterday UN monitors detected 89 detonations in the area of Velika Kladusa, but could not identify their origins.

We know [General Ratko] Mladic has a lot of influence over them, so some of the blame can be traced back to Pale,” said one UN official, referring to the Bosnian Serb commander. If not, Sarajevo says its forces will be compelled to attack elsewhere, to relieve the pressure. There is some UN sympathy for this position, allied to fears that it might offer the government an excuse to break the ceasefire.”The root of the problem is [the Krajina Serbs] are crossing the border and attacking Bosnia. “It’s not primarily a problem with Mr Abdic but with the Krajina Serbs.”Neither force is party to the truce; Sarajevo argues that both are acting in concert with the Bosnian Serb leadership in Pale and should therefore respect it.