DHAKA: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday proposed an all-party interim government in an effort to break a deadlock over upcoming parliamentary polls amid opposition calls for protests.

The proposal comes as the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has threatened to boycott any elections held under a government or interim administration led by Hasina.

The BNP, led by Khaleda Zia, has called for its supporters to stage non-stop armed protests across the country, starting October 25, to force Hasina to quit and hold polls under a neutral caretaker government.

“Our aim is free and fair polls. So I am proposing to the opposition party that you can send names from your members of the parliament whom we can include in the cabinet to form an all-party government for an interim period,” Hasina said in a televised address to the nation.

“I am urging the leader of the opposition that she'll respond to my call and keep my request,” she said.

There was no immediate reaction from the BNP, but the proposition is unlikely to sway the party which earlier set October 24 as a deadline to form a caretaker government.

Tension has been rising in politically unstable Bangladesh with a senior BNP official calling for the party's supporters to stage protests armed with machetes and knives unless their demands are met.

The United States and the United Nations have urged Hasina and Zia, known as the 'battling begums' in Bangladesh for their decades-long bitter rivalry, to hold a dialogue and break the impasse.

Violence ahead of a cancelled election in 2007 killed dozens and led the country's powerful military to step in and form an army-backed caretaker government.

The BNP is leading in opinion polls ahead of the elections which must be held by January 2014.