Talks to form a Belgian coalition government must continue 10 weeks since parliamentary elections as King Albert II declined a request Sunday by the Socialist Party leader to end the discussions, dpa reported.
French-speaking Socialist Party negotiating chief Elio di Rupo must continue efforts to form a government, Albert said.
Efforts to finally form a coalition government in Belgium ended without success earlier Sunday, as marathon 10-hour crisis talks broke up without a deal.
Parliamentary elections on June 13 ended in stalemate, with neither the centre-right parties from the Dutch-speaking Flanders and centre-left parties in French-speaking Wallonia winning an outright majority.
Still dividing the two camps are arcane rules on government- financing for the officially-bilingual capital, Brussels.
Di Rupo, told reporters there was no agreement over reform of state financing, but he expected the leader of the Flemish nationalist N-VA party, Bart de Wever, to back down on the issue.
Di Rupo was given the lead by the king to form a coalition.
But he said Sunday the rival sides positions' were simply "incompatible" and told the N-VA to "draw its own conclusions from that," signalling to other, smaller parties the chance of a possible deal.
De Wever has previously said he hoped to see a government formed in October, half-way through Belgium's six-month rotating presidency of the EU.
But in 2007, after the last set of elections, it took nine months to form a government, in a less polarized situation than the current one.