Brussels - Belgium's weekend newspapers backed a pledge by the Prime Minister, Mr Guy Verhofstadt, to get tough with extreme right-wing political groups and said the country should show more honesty in confronting its wartime past. Mr Verhofstadt's coalition government agreed late on Friday to a judicial crackdown on the extreme right after a Flemish regional minister, Mr Johan Sauwens, was forced to leave the cabinet over his attendance at a neo-Nazi rally of Belgian veterans of Hitler's Waffen SS.
The incident comes as Belgium assumes the presidency of the European Union on July 1st. The government has mooted the possibility of EU sanctions against Italy over the likely inclusion of right-wing parties in its next government.