New efforts to end the tense Orange Order stand-off at Drumcree are doomed to failure, it was claimed tonight.
After petrol bomb attacks by loyalists on police in Portadown, Co Armagh, security sources dismissed the Orange Order's decision to resume mediation, declaring: "It's a dead duck".
Meetings with South African mediator Mr Brian Currin had raised hopes a resolution to the bitterly disputed parade could yet be brokered.
Mr Currin has urged Portadown Orangemen barred from marching down the nationalist Garvaghy Road after their annual Battle of the Somme church service, to forge a compromise with residents.
But as the RUC prepared plans to combat violence linked to the July parade, sources tonight remained sceptical about the chances of a successful outcome.
"The fact that Currin is going public means that it's a dead duck," one said.
"Orangemen are trying to be seen to go along with this but they are not helpful. He's trying to bring the greatest weight of pressure on them but it's a forlorn hope."
Although the RUC does not have any special contingency plans for this year's Drumcree parade on July 8th, officers were preparing for serious disturbances."We plan for the worst and hope for the best," the security source said.
Fearing more attacks by renegade terror groupings, he added: "All we need is a dissident republican action to strike home and you're in trouble with loyalist paramilitaries because they will react."
Efforts to avoid violent confrontations for the fourth consecutive year come against heightening tension in Portadown.
Security forces have come under attack on successive nights in the town. Last night crowds of youths hurled petrol bombs and missiles at police and soldiers in the flashpoint Corcraine area.
Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition spokesman Mr Breandan MacCionnaith was equally downbeat about the chances of an imminent resolution.
"They are faced with Drumcree less than a month away and they have not advanced any further," he said. "It's just a last minute cosmetic exercise to say they have engaged in the process."
But Portadown Orange Order spokesman Mr David Jones insisted nationalist residents had not matched the loyalists' commitment to resolving the dispute and insisted hopes for a successful outcome lay with them.
"There's always a possibility," he said. "But with that possibility there has to be the will by all parties and I haven't seen any evidence of that on the part of the Garvaghy Road residents."
PA