In Belgium, center of the European Union, the crisis continues to worsen. The country has spent nearly six months without a new national government, any hope of a coalition between Dutch-speaking Flemish and French-speaking Walloon factions now appears to have evaporated, and the man who was supposed to be the next prime minister has quit: Belgian coalition talks collapse as national crisis deepens.

BRUSSELS (AFP) — Marathon talks to form a coalition government in Belgium collapsed on Saturday as would-be prime minister Yves Leterme admitted defeat in his attempts to forge an alliance.

Leterme told King Albert II he was throwing in the towel after almost six months of fruitless talks with potential coalition partners from the Dutch-speaking Flemish region of northern Belgium and the poorer francophone south of Wallonia. The king swiftly accepted his resignation as formal government “formateur” thereby launching speculation as to who he would appoint in his place and plunging the country deeper into crisis.

Leterme had given up the task once before since the June 10 general election put his party in pole position to form a Christian-liberal coalition, involving two parties from each side of the linguistic divide.

“The last weeks and months I have done all I can to bring this task to a successful conclusion,” Leterme, the Flemish Christian Democrat leader, said in the parliament building after throwing in the towel. “Unfortunately that has not been possible. Our country needs a stable government and reforms that will permit it to tackle its problems head on.”

The separatist Vlaams Belang party was excluded from these negotiations. Thanos points out one reason why, at the web site of the Antwerp-based Vlaams Belang Jungeren (Youth), where we discover a photo of young VB members singing from a book whose cover bears the white supremacist symbol known as the Odin’s Cross.

UPDATE at 12/2/07 10:36:54 am:

From the same Vlaams Belang Youth site, here’s another singing session, this time with an Ochala Rune white supremacist symbol on the front cover of the book on the right, and another, smaller Odin’s Cross on the back cover of the book on the left. (The Ochala Rune is also called the “Odal” or “Othal” Rune.)

UPDATE at 12/2/07 11:01:58 am:

A zoomed-in version of the Ochala Rune with increased contrast:

UPDATE at 12/2/07 11:33:37 am:

The variation of the Ochala Rune above was also used as a logo by the now-defunct VMO militia group. Check out their snazzy uniforms, with huge white gloves.