Belgium's future as a united country was cast into fresh doubt yesterday when its stressed-out Prime Minister resigned after only four months.

Yves Leterme, 47, has had a rotten time, having taken the job days after being struck down with severe gastric bleeding and a bout of pneumonia, possibly brought on by the pressure of trying to heal the country's linguistic divisions.

Mr Leterme reluctantly became Prime Minister after a nine-month period when the country effectively had no government because the rival Dutch and French-speaking groups could not agree on a mandate after an inconclusive general election. The hiatus triggered much speculation about whether Belgium could survive as one entity or would split into Flanders in the Dutch-speaking north, boasting 60 per cent of the population of 10.5 million, and Wallonia in the French-speaking south.

As the French-language daily Le Soir commented yesterday, Belgians were back on the edge of the abyss.

King Albert II added to Mr Leterme's woes by refusing to accept his resignation and forcing him to carry on in a caretaker role while the political parties continued to bicker about how they should run one of Europe's smallest but most fractious territories.

Both language communities have their own political parties. This has made finding agreement between Mr Leterme's Flemish Christian Democrats and their French-speaking counterparts hard enough, even without the added compication of the Flemish Conservatives, Liberals and Greens and all of their Wallonian counterparts.

“It appears that the communities' conflicting visions of how to give a new equilibrium to our state have become incompatible,” Mr Leterme said in a statement. “The federal consensus-model has reached its limits.”

As the Dutch-speaking son of a French-speaking father, he might have seemed a good choice to unite the country. He spoilt that by singing the Marseillaise, the French national anthem, when asked to recite the Belgian anthem, provoking criticism that he had no great interest in a united country. Mr Leterme had already announced that he regarded Belgium as an accident of history and was suspected throughout his tenure by French speakers of favouring Flemish devolution, having previously headed the Flemish parliament.

French-speaking newspapers were scathing at his decision to resign. La Libre Belgique said: “He took no initiatives, or very few. He deserts the ship with his head bowed low, abandoning his command when an economic crisis is at our doorstep.”

Mr Leterme's awkward five-party coalition could not reach agreement on two fundamental points: the extent of devolution to each sector of the country (including the small German-speaking community in the east) and how to redraw electoral boundaries in the suburban towns of Halle and Vilvoorde around Brussels, after a court ruling that the French-speaking residents should become part of Dutch-speaking constituencies.

There were even suggestions from French-speaking politicians that a compromise could lead to Brussels, the capital located in Flanders, being joined to Wallonia by a “Francophone corridor” 15 miles (25km) wide running due south.

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