The Parades Commission is today expected to ban the Orange Order from parading down Garvaghy Road in Portadown next Sunday despite behind-the-scenes efforts to broker a deal between the Portadown Orangemen and local nationalists.
Under its legislation, the commission is bound to rule today on whether the Drumcree parade should be allowed next Sunday. Sources said that it seemed likely that the parade would again be prohibited from marching down Garvaghy Road.
In the meantime, however, there is sensitive contact involving British officials, the Orange Order, Garvaghy residents, Catholic and Protestant clergy, and unionist and nationalist politicians, sources told The Irish Times.
While some reports suggested the parade might yet take place next Sunday, one senior source said that more contact might be required before that could be possible. "There could be a march along Garvaghy Road this summer, although I don't think it will be next Sunday," he said.
He said that politicians and business people from Derry had proposed as a model for ending the deadlock the manner in which the Apprentice Boys and nationalists in Derry had finally found agreement on the annual Apprentice Boys parade in the city every August.
Part of the resolution was establishing a community type festival around the annual commemoration of the lifting of the siege of Derry.
In recent years there were suggestions that Orangemen could march down Garvaghy Road one more time but that future Drumcree parades would be banned from the road. But this parade could only happen by Orangemen entering into face-to-face talks with the Garvaghy residents' group led by Mr Breandán MacCionnaith.
Portadown Orangemen had resisted such proposals. Some Orange and unionist sources believe there is merit in engagement so that a march could take place this year. "As for future years, well that would then be a matter for future negotiation. Why not get a parade this year and then take it from there," said an Orange Order source.
Mr MacCionnaith recently denied similar reports that there were efforts to broker a deal in Portadown this year. He could not be contacted yesterday.
Both the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, and the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, have stressed on a number of occasions the importance of ensuring that this summer's marching season concludes relatively peacefully.
Proponents of the Belfast Agreement believe that a calm summer could provide an enhanced opportunity for a political breakthrough in the autumn. Mr Adams and Mr Trimble, despite their differences, have met a number of times this spring and summer to discuss how they could prevent trouble at the marches and at the sectarian interfaces.
There was one favourable omen on Saturday when the Orange Order parade along part of the nationalist Springfield Road in west Belfast passed off peacefully following careful stewarding by republicans and loyalists.
