This will be in response to Hamid's letter to the deputy speaker on June 29, which tagged a three-point demand as preconditions for joining parliament.

The AL has been boycotting the House since June 26 following indecent remarks against Leader of the Opposition Sheikh Hasina by State Minister for Housing Alamgir Kabir.

"I will respond to his letter next week and invite them to a dialogue to resolve the crisis," Siddiqui told The Daily Star yesterday.

He hoped that the impasse would be overcome once the AL sat at the dialogue table with the treasury bench.

The Jatiya Sangsad session will resume at 4:00pm tomorrow after an interval of four days following the passage of the budget. But the main opposition is still rigid in its earlier position of boycotting the House unless its three-point demand is met.

The demands are expunction of the state minister's derogatory remarks against Hasina, an apology by the state minister and running of the House as per the rules of procedure.

The budget session may be extended by a week till July 22, parliament secretariat sources said.

To resolve the standoff, the deputy speaker sent the opposition deputy leader Abdul Hamid a letter on June 28 inviting him to a dialogue with BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan and Chief Whip Khandakar Delwar Hossain.

But Hamid wrote back to the deputy speaker on June 29, asking him to take effective steps to resolve the crisis. Hamid also noted that after the state minister unleashed invectives against Hasina -- which eventually led the AL's boycott of the House -- more treasury bench lawmakers followed suit without any objection from the Chair.