Dhaka - Bangladesh's two arch political rivals - Sheikh Hasina Wajed of Awami League and Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh Nationalist Party - have agreed to resolve broader national issues through dialogue, political aides of the two leaders said Wednesday.

Hasina wants discussion on specific issues while Zia opts for dialogue without any "agenda and pre-condition."

"Our president is ready for discussion with chief of Bangladesh Nationalist Party. But that must have an agenda," a spokesman for the Awami League president told reporters after a meeting with envoys of Italy, Netherlands and Sweden in Dhaka.

The same group of diplomats - Itala Maria Marta Occhi of Italy, Bea M ten Tusscher of the Netherlands and Britt Hagstroem of Sweden - met with the BNP chief on Wednesday for a briefing on Bangladesh's national election slated for December 18.

Responding to the dialogue offer from the Awami League, Zia's spokesman told media that she was ready to sit with her political rival for the greater national interest.

"The chairperson expressed her willingness to sit with the Awami League leader. But the talks will have take place without any condition and without any agenda," Zia's spokesman Nazrul Islam Khan told a press briefing.

The two women, who ruled the South Asian nation over the last one and a half decades, either in the government or in the opposition, have been barely on talking terms.

They attended the Armed Forces Day celebration programme on November 21, 2006, but the two former premiers did not speak to each other on the occasion.

Many attempts have failed to bring the two together to try to resolve the differences in a country sharply divided between Zia's BNP and Hasina's Awami League party.

The prospect of talks comes at a time as Bangladesh is preparing for a general election for transition to democracy, ending two years of army-led emergency rule which was imposed after a wave of political violence. (dpa)