The London bombings have prompted a rethink of planned Orange marches for Drumcree this Sunday and on the Twelfth next week, the Order has admitted.
Amid nationalist calls for contentious Orange marches to be reconsidered , an Orange Order spokesman told The Irish Times: "I'm sure they are being discussed. I know that Grand Master Robert Saulters has been rewriting aspects of his speech, due to be delivered on the Twelfth. It's a very difficult situation."
As tension rose in advance of the planned parade past Ardoyne on the evening of the Twelfth, SDLP Assemblyman Alban Maginness said: "At a time when so many have died it would just be appalling if we in the North just fought each other over parades." Speaking after a meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, Mr Maginness called on Orange marchers and nationalist protesters not to take to the streets.
Like Sinn Féin, which also met the Minister yesterday, the party called for dialogue between both sides in an effort to resolve the problem of contentious marches.
Mr Gerry Kelly, a Sinn Féin Assembly member for north Belfast, said: " I called on the Minister to intervene on behalf of the nationalist residents of Ardoyne, and he has agreed to raise our concerns with the British government and the Parades Commission." Mr Kelly added: "The Ardoyne dialogue group explained to the Minister the detail of their compromise position which would, in the short term, help ease tensions around the Twelfth parades."
According to Sinn Féin, Mr Ahern said he would convey nationalist concerns to the Government and to the Parades Commission. A Grand Orange Lodge spokesman explained that decisions regarding Orange demonstrations were not arrived at by authorities in the organisation's Belfast headquarters. Instead, authority within the order rests with 123 districts who make decisions on determining local parades. If such marches are reconsidered it will involve the lodges concerned in conjunction with their local district, he said.
The order's headquarters told The Irish Times that any review of plans for the Twelfth would take place "at a very parochial level" and that the Grand Orange Lodge "has no formal position" on what should be done in response to the London attacks.
The SDLP also called on Sinn Féin and others not to criticise the Parades Commission claiming that to do so would be to fall into a DUP trap.
"We do not think there should be a parade along the Springfield Road or past Ardoyne shops. But we urge people to respect the law and keep the peace," an SDLP spokesman said.
He claimed that attacks on the Parades Commission "will only play into the hands of the DUP's malign agenda" to destroy it.
"Without the Parades Commission we would be back to the anarchy of the 1990s when might was right and rioting was everywhere. We cannot fall into the DUP's trap and let that happen."