Sinn Fein has accused a senior member of the Ulster Unionist Party of encouraging the continuing protests in Portadown over the Drumcree parade.
The Rev Martin Smyth, the MP for South Belfast, was criticised for addressing a religious service in Portadown's Brownstown Park on Sunday after a parade in support of the stand taken by Orangemen at Drumcree. Mr Smyth is a former grand master of the Orange Order and was opposed to the Belfast Agreement.
Sinn Fein's Mr Martin Mc Guinness said the presence of the UUP man at the parade was "nothing short of disgraceful and hypocritical" and was "a green light" for the protests to continue. Nationalists in Portadown were being subjected to "a vicious sectarian campaign" since the Drumcree parade was rerouted away from Garvaghy Road in early July.
The leader of the Alliance Party, Mr Sean Neeson, has called on leaders of the Orange Order to talk with "all parties involved in the Drumcree conflict to prevent further injuries".
"The Orange Order needs to be reminded that the three Quinn children were murdered and a young policeman clings to his life because of their inability to get around the table and resolve the problem as happened with the Apprentice Boys leadership in Derry," Mr Neeson said. An RUC man was critically injured on September 5th after he was struck by a loyalist blast bomb in a Drumcree-related protest.
Meanwhile Mr Gregory Campbell of the DUP has criticised plans by nationalists in Derry to hold a series of events to commemorate a civil rights march in the city on October 5th, 1968. That march, which was banned and resulted in nationalists, including the then MP Mr Gerry Fitt, being batoned by police, focused world attention on the civil rights campaign.
Mr Campbell said he was particularly opposed to plans to hold a march along the original route, which skirts Protestant districts, and said the unionist community felt the parade and the rationale behind it were "completely foreign" to them.
However, one of the organisers of the parade, Mr Fionnbarra O Dochartaigh accused Mr Campbell of trying to sectarianise the march. Its aim was to demand jobs, decent wages and full human rights for working-class people of both traditions. No flags or banners would be allowed. "Protestant working-class people need human rights just as much as Catholic workers," he said.