BRUSSELS, Belgium — Prime Minister Leterme of Belgium offered the resignation of his government yesterday after it failed to rally around constitutional reforms designed to grant more self-rule to Belgium’s Dutch- and French-speaking camps.

Vice Premier Reynders said he “regretted the [resignation] put at risk economic policies,” including steps to generate moderate budget surpluses to offset higher social costs resulting from the aging of the population.

Mr. Leterme submitted the resignation to King Albert II, who is expected to ask the government to remain in a caretaker capacity. But there was no word late yesterday from Mr. Albert’s office.

Mr. Leterme’s government — a frictious alliance from both sides of Belgium’s linguistic divide — took office on March 20 after more than six months of political deadlock that threatened to split the country.

Flemish parties want the prosperous Dutch-speaking north of Belgium to be more autonomous by shifting taxes and some social security measures from the federal to the regional level. They also want more self-rule in transport, health, labor market, and justice areas. Francophone parties say enough powers have been devolved.

Belgian politics have long been overshadowed by linguistic disputes. Since the 1960s, the 6.5 million Dutch-speakers and 4 million Francophones have little by little acquired significant powers of self-rule.

Today, almost everything is split into Dutch- and French-speaking camps. An east-west “language frontier” slices Belgium in half, leaving the capital, Brussels, as the nation’s only officially bilingual region.

But the latest bout of linguistic squabbling has given the debate a nasty tone and triggered calls in Dutch-speaking Belgium for the breakup of the country that became independent of the Netherlands in 1830.