Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, spokesman for the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, has confirmed that he will attend talks organised by the British Prime Minister next week aimed at resolving the Drumcree crisis.
However, it remains unclear if the Orange Order will participate. Mr Tony Blair has written to Orange leaders and nationalist residents inviting them to three days of intensive "proximity talks".
The discussions will be chaired by an industrial mediator, Mr Frank Blair. A Downing Street spokesman said: "We need to resolve this issue, which has poisoned the atmosphere in Northern Ireland for too long.
"Frank Blair has been working hard in recent months to try to reach a local accommodation and we hope the parties will accept the invitation to these proximity talks." There are no plans at present for Mr Tony Blair to take a hands-on approach to the discussions by participating himself. Portadown Orangemen said they could not comment on the invitation or their response, as it had not yet been received.
Mr Mac Cionnaith accepted his invitation but predicted the talks would not succeed unless there was face-to-face dialogue with the Orange Order, which the Portadown Orangemen have so far refused.
"Direct dialogue is a prerequisite to achieving any solution in Portadown," he said. The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, described the discussions as "vitally important".
The North's Parades Commission announced yesterday it had decided against imposing any restrictions on a parade by junior Orangemen in Portadown on Saturday. Sinn Fein condemned the decision.
Security sources said there were plans to send at least 2,000 British soldiers to the North if no agreement is reached ahead of the Drumcree parade on July 4th.
Meanwhile, round-table talks continued at Stormont but there was no sign of a breakthrough on the deadlock over decommissioning. The pro-agreement parties all took part but declined to give interviews afterwards.
The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, has urged Dr Mowlam to recall the North's Assembly, which was suspended in April. "With the failure of the SDLP and the UUP to agree a way forward, the rest of the parties and the people are being held to ransom.
"There are critical matters which must be debated, not least the political crisis. There are also social and economic issues, agriculture, the state of our schools and the health service. The Assembly should be debating these matters."
Mr John Hume has supported the Jubilee 2000 campaign for Western countries to cancel debts from the Third World. Addressing schoolchildren in Belfast yesterday, he said the West had a responsibility to help all nations torn apart by war and famine.
"We must concentrate on the export of human rights and the primacy of peace," he said.
The UK Unionist candidate in next month's Euro elections, Mr Robert McCartney, has challenged his UUP rival to a public debate on European and domestic issues. "Jim Nicholson's expertise on European affairs has been cited by his party leader, David Trimble, as a reason for voting for him."
Sir Reg Empey, of the UUP, said Mr McCartney's decision to contest the election had increased Sinn Fein's chances of securing a seat. "If Bob McCartney spent half as much time attacking Sinn Fein as he spends attacking the UUP, the interests of the pro-Union people would be far better served." Sir Reg dismissed as "scurrilous and untrue" any suggestion that his party would sit in government with Sinn Fein without Provisional IRA decommissioning.
The Alliance Euro candidate, Mr Sean Neeson, has visited Ballymena and Ballymoney, Co Antrim, as part of his campaign. "A vote for Alliance will be a vote for the political centre, its values of pluralism and anti-sectarianism and its objectives of a new shared society," he said.