Politicians agree to form coalition

Belgium’s feuding political parties agreed to form a coalition government after nine months of discord that had threatened to carve the seat of the European Union into two nations.

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

The power-sharing agreement tackled immigration, tax and social issues, but it did not resolve the root of the government crisis: demands from politicians of the economically prosperous northern Flemish region for greater autonomy from the financially depressed, southern, French-speaking section of the country.

In a rare act of royal intervention, Belgium’s King Albert II has been pushing the political parties to find a way to create a coalition government capable of running the kingdom, which has been consumed by political discord since elections in June.