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Belgium tries to dampen crisis talk
Real estate news By The Times
Oct 12 2007 2:36AM
Brussels - Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht has told Belgian embassies how to handle queries on their current political crisis, his ministry said, amid calls in some quarters for the country to split. “It is clear that our country will have a government in good time,” De Gucht wrote in a memo to Belgian envoys. “The pragmatic spirit” and the “typical search for a compromise” would prevail, he said in his message to all Belgian embassies, a copy of which AFP obtained.
The Belgian foreign minister wants to “cut short certain suppositions,” stressing that “it is important to recall that in the 177 years of Belgium’s existence, its citizens, Dutch- and French-speaking, have sought and found ways to live together in peaceful cohabitation". The backdrop to the message is the failure of parties in the Dutch-speaking northern region of Flanders and francophone Wallonia to the south to forge a coalition government almost four months after the country held a general election on June 10. Around 350 Flemish nationalist extremists protested in an outer suburb of Brussels on Sunday, burning Belgian flags and calling for independence from French-speaking Wallonia. This is just the kind of action, while relatively small, that can create the sort of headlines which the Belgian foreign minister is keen to counter.
The aim of De Gucht’s note is to “help” diplomats “reply to questions posed by the press ... on the political situation in Belgium,” foreign ministry spokesman Francois Delhaye said. For example, the official message is that while the negotiations on forming a government are “often difficult and complex” they are “always completed in a satisfactory manner" Belgium’s federal state comprises around 10.5 million people, some 60% in relatively rich Flanders, 3.5 million people in Wallonia and one million in the largely Francophone but officially bilingual region of Brussels.
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