By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 19, 2008

PARIS, March 18 -- Belgium's feuding political parties agreed Tuesday to form a coalition government after nine months of political chaos that threatened to carve the seat of the European Union into separate nations.

"It's a good deal for a government, with balanced measures," Yves Leterme, a Flemish Christian Democrat who is scheduled to become prime minister Thursday, told local RTBF radio after an all-night bargaining session among the country's five political parties.

The power-sharing agreement tackled the thorny issues of immigration, taxes and social policy, but it did not resolve the problem at the root of the crisis: demands from politicians in the prosperous, Dutch-speaking Flemish region in the north for greater autonomy from the economically depressed, French-speaking section in the south.

In a rare royal intervention, Belgium's King Albert II has been pushing the political parties -- two Flemish and three Francophone -- to find a way to set aside enough of their differences to create a coalition government capable of running the kingdom, which has been rudderless and consumed by political discord since national elections last June.

Early Tuesday, leaders of the five parties ended a marathon 21-hour session in which they reached agreement on enough social and economic issues to govern the country. They are still squabbling over how to allot cabinet seats.

The debate between the Dutch-speaking Flemings and the French-speaking Walloons has echoed other European struggles over national identity, the preservation of native culture and language, and competition in the global marketplace.

Flemish politicians have made major gains in local, regional and national elections in the past several years on platforms espousing greater autonomy for the more economically dynamic north. Even moderate Flemish politicians have embraced the idea of Flemish independence, or autonomy to the point of near-independence.

A poll for the Brussels daily La Libre Belgique last fall found that about 40 percent of respondents believed that their 177-year-old country would cease to exist within a decade because of its schisms.

The Walloons of the old industrial south, who consume a larger share of government welfare and other social payments, oppose giving their northern rivals what they see as disproportionate power.

In the June elections, the voting was so fractured that no party won enough seats to form a government. The king asked Leterme -- who won the most electoral college votes in the national Senate races -- to serve as prime minister and try to pull the parties together.

Instead, Leterme inflamed tensions with anti-Francophone comments. Eventually the former prime minister was asked to remain on the job until a government could be formed.

Now Leterme, 47, will become head of the government at a time when he has dismally low approval ratings. In a poll published Monday, only 10 percent of Francophones and 45 percent of Flemings said they had confidence in him as prime minister, according to Belgian news services.