New Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey has stated he will make parades a priority issue of his leadership.
Sir Reg accused the Parades Commission of causing community instability after Orangemen were banned from marching onto the nationalist Springfield Road on Saturday through Workman Avenue.
Sir Reg, who defeated North Down Assembly member Alan McFarland and Strangford MLA David McNarry for the leadership on Friday night, insisted there could be no political settlement in Northern Ireland until the parades issue was properly tackled.
The new UUP leader made his remarks after a protest Orange Order parade through the Shankill on Saturday, watched by thousands of loyalist supporters, passed off peacefully.
A huge police security operation with British army back-up was mounted on Saturday amid concerns that the commission's decision to reroute the parade away from Workman Avenue could trigger violence involving supporters of the Orange Order and, more worryingly, loyalist paramilitaries.
Tensions were somewhat defused after the Orange Order decided on Friday night to "postpone" their parade to the Whiterock Orange Hall on the Springfield Road. Instead Orangemen staged a protest march through the Shankill on Saturday which ended without serious incident.
Orangemen, however, insisted they would persist with their efforts to be allowed carry out the Whiterock parade this summer. While Saturday was peaceful, the anger and cross-community tensions it aroused reinforced just how difficult it will be for the rest of the marching season - particularly with Drumcree and the Twelfth of July parades coming up shortly - to be successfully concluded.
North Belfast DUP MP Nigel Dodds, who joined Orangemen for the Shankill protest parade, said his party would raise the issue with the British government this week. He said after the Whiterock rerouting and after loyalist marchers were attacked by nationalists during the Tour of the North parade last Friday week, that the "Orange institution and the unionist community have been responsible, mature and law-abiding".
"But no one, either in government, the media or wider afield, should ignore the deep-seated anger and frustration that exists in the unionist community of north and west Belfast. That community now needs to have its rights recognised and upheld," added Mr Dodds.
It was a theme taken up by new UUP leader Sir Reg Empey in a number of weekend interviews. He said he would also be meeting Northern Ireland Office ministers to raise concerns about the decisions of the Parades Commission.
"I want to elevate this parades issue right onto the table because there can be no proper stable political solution in Northern Ireland without this issue being resolved," he said.
"The Parades Commission has completely gone off the Richter scale in the instability that it is causing," he told BBC Radio Ulster's Inside Politics programme.
He said new Northern Secretary Peter Hain must radically reassess the parades situation when appointing the next Parades Commission in the autumn.
He also told The Irish Times he would accept the resignation offer from the 14-member officer board of the UUP, issued before Saturday's leadership election.