The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, said yesterday that the refusal of the leadership of the Orange Order to talk to the Garvaghy Road residents' group was very serious. He urged the order to meet members of the group immediately in an effort to break the Drumcree deadlock.
Mr Hume said the consequences of talking were positive, but the consequences of not talking could be very serious. "I made a request at the start of this for dialogue with the Orange Order because I had a proposal which I thought would have been to the satisfaction of all sides, but I had no response to that.
"I think what we are witnessing at the moment is something which the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland don't want to see and of course the single answer to it is dialogue, is talking, even though it is with people you might not want to talk to.
"The other choice is don't talk, do what's happening now and look at all the risks that are in that," he said.
Mr Hume said that while some people believed the future of the newly-elected Assembly was at stake, people had to accept that the Assembly had been endorsed by 72 per cent of the population in the North.
"If that were to be overthrown, it would demonstrate very clearly a very negative aspect and would do enormous damage to those people who would overthrow it. It would mean that a minority would be governing the whole of the relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between Britain and Ireland. That is totally unacceptable and would obviously be unacceptable to any British government."
With every right, Mr Hume said, also came a duty to exercise one's rights responsibly.