Belgium's government was trying desperately to stave off pressure for it to resign yesterday, one day after the short-lived escape of the country's most notorious prisoner forced the exit of the justice and interior ministers.
Mr Marc Dutroux, a convicted paedophile who was in jail pending a trial for the murders of four girls and the abduction and abuse of two others, spent more than three hours on the run on Thursday after a spectacular escape from a loosely-guarded courtroom. Within hours of his rearrest, the Justice Minister, Mr Stefaan de Clerck, and the Minister of the Interior, Mr Johan Vande Lanotte, had announced their resignations.
Mr Vande Lanotte publicly apologised yesterday, but it was clear public anger had not been appeased.
Opposition parties have tabled three separate motions of no confidence in the centre-left coalition of the Prime Minister, Mr JeanLuc Dehaene. Parliament will vote on them on Tuesday.
Organisers of the White Committees set up in 1996 after 325,000 Belgians formed a White March to protest against police ineptitude in the initial arrest of Mr Dutroux called for the head of the gendarmerie, Gen Willy Deridder, to step down.
A demonstration was organised for late last night outside the law courts in Brussels to push for Gen Deridder to go.
In another development, police searching the house of Mr Andras Pandy, a Hungarian-born pastor charged with murdering six members of his family, have found teeth belonging to eight other people, judicial sources said yesterday.
Police had previously discovered remains thought to come from five different suspected victims of the alleged mass killer.
Mr Pandy (71) was arrested on October 16th on charges that he had murdered two former wives and four of his eight children between 1986 and 1990. His daughter, Agnes (39), with whom the pastor had an incestuous relationship, confessed in November that she had been involved in five of the murders, including that of her own mother. Mr Pandy denies all the charges.