Belgium has entered a new period of uncertainty after King Albert II refused to accept the prime minister's resignation.
A statement from the palace said the king would not allow Prime Minister Yves Leterme, who only took office in March, to step down and had given three senior politicians two weeks to chart a way forward.
It means that Mr Leterme, who will in the interim oversee the implementation of social reforms recently agreed by his five-party coalition government, will have a fourth shot at trying to unite Belgium around a power-sharing deal.
The 47-year-old Flemish conservative resigned on Monday, unable to reconcile the demands of parties from Flanders, where some 60% of Belgium's 10.5m people live, over radical reforms to the federal state.
Flanders, Belgium's Dutch-speaking northern half, has long sought more regional powers to reflect its prosperity. It also resents subsidising the less affluent, French-speaking Wallonia region to its south.
Flemish parties now appear determined to press their demands for more powers, which have gone largely ignored since they were made in earnest at the end of the 1990s.
The king has designated Wallon minister Raymond Langendries, Francois-Xavier de Donnea of the Brussels-Capital region and Karl-Heinz Lambertz from the tiny German-speaking community to kick-start an institutional dialogue.
The ‘three wise men’ have been asked to examine in what way guarantees can be offered in order to begin in a credible way an institutional dialogue. They will have to report back at the end of this month.
Should Mr Leterme's government stay standing, analysts say, Belgium could evolve towards a confederation, with central power diluted in favour of the linguistic regions.
The new period of uncertainty comes just as Belgium appeared to have found some sense of stability following a nine-month period in which no government could be formed after 10 June elections last year.
Since that crisis, French speakers have agreed to enter into reform talks, realising it was perhaps the only way to stop Belgium breaking up, which almost one in two Flemish people want, according to a recent opinion poll.
Analysts say that nobody wants fresh elections, as that could give a boost to fringe parties, but this new twist and the fact that the problem has dragged on for more than a year does not auger well for regional elections next June.
