Government crisis in Belgium bolsters separatist notions

BRUSSELS - Belgium has given the world Audrey Hepburn, René Magritte, the saxophone, and deep-fried potato slices that somehow are called French.

But the back story of this flat, Maryland-size country of 10.4 million is of a bad marriage writ large - two nationalities living together that cannot stand each other. Now, more than three months after a general election, Belgium has created not a government, but a crisis so profound that it has led to a flood of warnings, predictions, even promises that the country is about to disappear.

"We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate, and beer," Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, said in an interview. "It's 'bye-bye, Belgium' time."

Radical separatists like Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders - where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made - and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.

"There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine," said Caroline Sagesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a sociopolitical research organization in Brussels. "I don't believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I'd be surprised if I were to die in Belgium."

Since the kingdom of Belgium was created as an obstacle to French expansionism in 1830, it has struggled for cohesion. Anyone who has spoken French in a Flemish city quickly gets a sense of the mutual hostility that is a part of daily life. The current crisis dates to June 10, when the Flemish Christian Democrats, who demand greater autonomy for Flanders, came in first with one-fifth of the seats in Parliament.

Yves Leterme, the party leader, would have become prime minister if he had been able to put together a coalition government.

But he was rejected by French speakers because of his contempt for them - an oddity because his own father speaks French. He further alienated them, and even some moderate Flemish leaders, on Belgium's national holiday in July, when he appeared unable to sing Belgium's national anthem.

Belgium's mild-mannered, 73-year-old king, Albert II, has struggled to mediate, even though under the constitution he has no power other than to appoint ministers and rubber-stamp laws enacted by Parliament. He has welcomed a parade of politicians and elder statesmen to Belvedere palace in Brussels, successively appointing four political leaders to resolve the crisis. All have failed.

On one level, there is normalcy and calm. The country is governed largely by a patchwork of regional bureaucracies, so trains run on time, mail is delivered, garbage is collected, the police keep order.

Officials from the former government - including an erstwhile onetime prime minister, Guy Verhhofstadt, who is ethnically Flemish - report for work every day and continue to collect salaries. The former government is allowed to pay bills, implement previously decided policies, and make urgent decisions on peace and security.

Earlier this month, for example, the governing Council of Ministers approved the deployment of 80 to 100 peacekeeping troops to Chad and a six-month extension for 400 Belgian peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon under United Nations mandates.

But a new government will be needed to approve a budget for next year.

With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards, and the Catalans.

Certainly, there are reasons why Belgium is likely to stay together, at least in the short term.

Brussels, the overwhelmingly French-speaking capital, is located in Flanders and historically was a Flemish-speaking city. There would be massive local and international resistance to turning Brussels into the capital of a country called Flanders.

The economies of the two regions are inextricably intertwined, and separation would be a fiscal nightmare.

Then there is the issue of the national debt (90 percent of Belgium's gross domestic product) and how to divide it equitably.

But there is deep resentment in Flanders that, with a much healthier economy, the north must subsidize the French-speaking south, where unemployment is twice that in Flanders.

A poll by the private Field Research Institute released on Tuesday indicated that 66 percent of the inhabitants of Flanders believe that the country will split up "sooner or later," and 46 percent favor such a division. The pollsters interviewed 1,000 people by telephone.

"Belgium has survived on compromise since 1830," said Baudouin Bruggeman, 55, a teacher.

"Everyone puffs himself up in this banana republic. You have to remember that this is Magritte country, the country of surrealism. Anything can happen."