The proposed head of Bangladesh's caretaker government on Saturday refused the job of steering the country through national polls amid deadly protests against his appointment that left at least 14 people dead.
The decision by former Supreme Court justice K.M. Hasan followed two days of street violence between police, supporters of the outgoing government and opposition parties that oppose his appointment.
"It is very sad and unfortunate that the situation has come to this when the political parties cannot resolve their differences through dialogue," he said in a statement.
"It is best I should stand aside rather than be a hurdle to the political process. I call on the parties concerned to put aside their political differences and co-operate to enable a peaceful election process," he added.
His refusal could clear the way for a compromise candidate to be installed as head of the temporary administration that will oversee parliamentary elections in January.
But discussions appeared to stall again on Saturday between the government and opposition figures on a possible replacement after the opposition rejected a proposal for the figurehead president, Iajuddin Ahmed, to take the post.
The president, however, has invited representatives of the four main political parties to hold further talks on Sunday, his press secretary Mukhlesur Rahman Chowdhury said.
"He has to get the country out of this crisis and find an acceptable and neutral chief of the caretaker government," he said.
"Two senior officials of four major parties, namely the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Awami League, Jamaat-e-Islami and Jatiya Party, have been invited for talks starting tomorrow morning," he added.
Earlier, the main opposition Awami League's secretary general, Abdul Jalil, said his party would "accept anyone as the head except for K.M. Hasan and chief election commissioner M.A. Aziz".
He was speaking after Saturday's talks with his counterpart from the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, and the president.
The opposition, which also accuses Aziz of being a government stooge, had vowed to paralyse the country with protests if the government installed Hasan as the caretaker chief.
It accused the BNP of seeking to rig the elections by appointing pro-government officials to the temporary body.
The mandate of Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's coalition government expired at midnight on Friday ahead of the polls.
The government has 15 days to transfer authority to the caretaker body, which will hold new parliamentary elections within 90 days.
The violence claimed 10 lives on Saturday and four on Friday.
Of the ten killed on Saturday in Dhaka and across the country, five died from bullet wounds, police said. Two people were knifed to death and two others were hit with rocks. The cause of death for the tenth person was not known.
All the clashes were believed to have been between members of the BNP and opposition parties.
In Dhaka supporters of the BNP and opposition parties clashed on Saturday and police fired tear gas and fought running battles with demonstrators.
Opposition activists brandishing sticks and throwing rocks at police turned parts of the capital into a battleground.
Clashes between the BNP and the Awami League were reported all over Dhaka and the country. More than 15,000 officers were deployed on the streets of the capital to try to maintain order.
A doctor reported that many of the injured were being brought to his hospital in Dhaka with gun shot wounds. The doctor added that at least 200 people had been treated there.
The private UNB agency said more than 2,000 people had been injured.
Around 100 police officers were injured in clashes in the centre of the capital with protesters who had defied a ban on gatherings, police said.
Police fired tear gas at a crowd of 15,000 demonstrators who pelted them with rocks and stones, said deputy police commissioner Aurangeb Mahbub.
Traffic was off Dhaka's streets and opposition supporters barricaded some main highways linking the city to the rest of the country.
The non-partisan interim administration and its head, who is appointed by the government, is meant to ensure no party can rig polls.
But the opposition accused Hasan, who served as a senior BNP-appointed official in the late 1970s, of being pro-government and said fair polls would be impossible with him in the post.