Residents pressed to allow parade

The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, have exerted pressure on the Garvaghy Road group to allow Portadown Orangemen parade down the road, according to a spokeswoman for the residents' coalition.

Both suggested that it was time for the parade to go down the road, she said. When they met the Garvaghy residents at Stormont on Thursday both spoke of a "new context" in which the parade could be permitted.

She said Mr Blair argued for the parade either going down Garvaghy Road yesterday or alternatively next Sunday. She understood the "new context" to mean that the British-Irish proposals presented at Stormont should be linked to the Drumcree dispute.

"Tony Blair asked would we agree to this Sunday [yesterday] or next Sunday. He said the Orangemen had to be given hope and that a gesture was needed."

Mr Ahern, she added, spoke of previous Drumcree parades or stand-offs taking place in "the old context" but of any future march happening in the "new context".

She said Mr Blair told them that in return for agreement on a march either yesterday or next Sunday, the Portadown Orangemen would protest at Drumcree yesterday but then "scale the protest down to zero".

The Garvaghy Road group in turn told Mr Blair and Mr Ahern that they wanted "breathing space" from Orange and loyalist protests and that thereafter they would be prepared to engage in face-to-face talks with Portadown Orangemen. A resolution of the impasse at Drumcree could be reached provided both sides committed themselves to working together to improve community relations in Portadown, the Catholic primate, Archbishop Sean Brady said yesterday, writes Christine Newman.

In his address at St Peter's Church, Drogheda, at the annual pilgrimage to the shrine of St Oliver Plunkett, he said they had come to pray that a just basis could be found, and accepted, for a lasting partnership between the two traditions on this island.