The Bangladeshi opposition leader, Mr Begum Khaleda Zia, yesterday asked US President Bill Clinton to persuade the country's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, to resign, a spokesman for Mr Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party said.
"We have briefed the US president on the overall political, law and order situation and other issues," former finance minister, Mr Saifur Rahman, told reporters after Mr Clinton had a 45minute meeting with Mr Khaleda in his hotel.
"She asked Mr Clinton to try to use his influence on Hasina to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to hold early elections," he said.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has staged a series of crippling strikes over the years in an unsuccessful attempt to force the resignation of Mr Hasina's administration, which it accuses of inefficiency and corruption.
Mr Hasina took office in June 1996 and the next parliamentary polls are due in 2001.
The BNP has accused the ruling Awami League of trying to feed "historically wrong and misleading information" to Mr Clinton for political gains.
It refuses to accept Mr Hasina's father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan in 1971, as the "father of the nation".
It claims that Mr Khaleda's husband, the former army chief and president, Gen Ziaur Rahman, declared Bangladesh's independence on March 26th, 1971, not Mujibur.
The controversy has lived beyond the lives of both the men and has been the main divide between the two parties.