The issue of contentious Orange parades has dominated the closing stages of the Northern Ireland election campaign, with exchanges between the Ulster Unionist leader and the Sinn Fein president. Mr David Trimble told a news conference in Belfast the controversial Drumcree parade in Portadown should be allowed to go ahead and he urged Mr Gerry Adams to help ease tensions by "calling his dogs off".
At a Sinn Fein news conference in Belfast, Mr Adams said: "One hard word borrows another and when Mr Trimble goes into negative mode, it nearly invites others to take up the same stance." He said the parades issue was a test of Mr Trimble's "stewardship" and called on him to talk to his own constituents on the proposed route of the Drumcree parade, Portadown's Garvaghy Road.
Mr Trimble had said earlier the Drumcree issue could be examined at the first meeting of the Northern Assembly next week. "The only sensible outcome is for the traditional parade to go ahead and if people object to it, then by all means organise a protest but let it be peaceful and dignified."
Mr Trimble also told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he could not have a "proper relationship" with Sinn Fein until decommissioning was addressed. "I cannot treat as normal democrats people who don't behave as normal democrats." ein president Mr Adams told reporters he was convinced the UUP would meet his party sooner or later.
He believed "David Trimble intellectually knows there has to be change" and knew the Belfast Agreement had to be implemented, but emotionally he was in the No camp. "When his emotions and his intellect are harmonised then you'll see the entire process starting to click. Unfortunately that has yet to happen." Mr Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party predicted Mr Trimble, whom he described as "the great wrecker" of unionism, would be "partnering Gerry Adams in government by the end of the year without one bullet being decommissioned".
Ms Eileen Bell, Alliance Party candidate in North Down, said the referendum and now the election were "the best chance we will ever have of securing peace in this society and I would urge everyone in Northern Ireland to do what they can for a brighter future".
Mr Tom French, who is standing for the Workers' Party in Upper Bann, accused the leaders of the UUP and the SDLP of trying to turn tomorrow's poll into a sectarian head-count.
Meanwhile, the bomb which exploded early yesterday on the Newry-to-Forkhill road, near the village of Drumintee in south Armagh, was thought to have been the work of republican dissidents. No one was hurt in the blast which occurred about 2.40 a.m. and left a 3 ft by 20 ft crater.