"We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer," said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. "It's `bye-bye, Belgium' time."

Radical Flemish separatists like Mr. Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders -- where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made -- and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.

"There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine," said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. "I don't believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I'd be surprised if I were to die in Belgium."

With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards and the Catalans. <...>

... there is also deep resentment in Flanders that its much healthier economy must subsidize the French-speaking south, where unemployment is double that of the north. <...>

The turning point is widely believed to have been last December when RTBF, a French-language public television channel, broadcast a hoax on the breakup of Belgium.