Belgium crisis grows as talks fail

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Talks aimed at forming a governing coalition in Belgium collapsed on Saturday, more than five months after general elections.

Yves Leterme, the politician who had been asked to form a government and become its prime minister, resigned his mandate, unable to heal a rift between Dutch-speaking and Francophone parties.

King Albert II accepted the resignation of the Dutch-speaking Christian Democrat leader. It remained unclear what the monarch would do next to resolve one of Belgium's deepest political crises of the past half-century.

Leterme resigned after one of four prospective coalition partners refused to back a plan designed to lead to more autonomy for the country's rival linguistic camps.

Leterme's own Dutch-speaking Christian Democrats backed a plan for a conference of legislators to debate constitutional reforms that would grant more powers to Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia. The Liberals on both sides of the linguistic border, which slices Belgium into northern Flanders and southern Wallonia, did too.

But the fourth prospective coalition partner -- the French-speaking Christian Democrats refused to agree.

Christian Democrats and Liberals between them won 81 of the 150 legislative seats in June 10 elections. But their government talks have been mired in linguistic spats, with Francophone politicians resisting demands by Dutch-speakers for more autonomy within the Belgian federation.

Belgium comprises 6 million Dutch-speakers and 4.5 million French-speakers.

The stalemate in government talks stems from fears in Wallonia that granting more powers of self-rule to Belgium's rival regions will dry up the flow of money from prosperous Flanders to Wallonia, Belgium's poorer, Francophone southern half.

Leterme's offer contained a proposal to have the constitutional reform convention consider shifting social security and taxation from the federal to the regional governments.

In Wallonia, tinkering with social security has long been seen as eroding the principle that the rich pay more to support the poor.

The call for more self-rule in Flanders has become increasingly loud in the past 20 years under pressure from the rise of the far-right Flemish Interest Party, which polled 19 percent of the vote in June. Its anti-immigrant, pro-independence views have pushed mainstream parties to the right, even forcing Leterme's long dominant Christian Democrats into an alliance with a small nationalist party.

There is no deadline for concluding government talks.

Linguistic disputes have long dominated Belgian politics. Regional autonomy has been granted step-by-step over the past three decades but there has never been a debate as fierce and divisive as the one that has surfaced in the past six months, with politicians openly debating the possibility of Belgium's breakup.

Until a new government can take office, the outgoing center-left government has stayed on in a caretaker capacity. E-mail to a friend

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