Nationalists in south Belfast have been urged not to obstruct the route of the Saturday's Apprentice Boys march down the lower Ormeau Road. The SDLP has advised residents to show their opposition to the Parades Commission decision in a peaceful and dignified manner. Nationalists in Derry also plan to hold a protest rally on Saturday. Ten thousand Loyalists are expected in Derry for the parade there.
Ulster Unionist negotiator, Reg Empey, has said that the comments by the residents' groups showed a total level of intolerance of the Unionist tradition. He claimed that the groups did not believe in parity of esteem. He said that they wanted to exercise a complete veto on the rights of Unionists, regardless of the law. He claimed that there was a well-orchestrated plot developing.
Mr. Empey said that Loyalists must ensure that they did nothing to assist the nationalists to salvage anything from the situation. He said that dignified law-abiding behaviour by the Apprentice Boys in Derry on Saturday would inflict far greater damage on the residents' groups than anything else. He said that it was especially sad that the Omagh bomb anniversary had been chosen by the groups to launch, what he said was, a campaign of confrontation and street violence.
Nationalist residents in Derry and South Belfast said earlier that they would hold rallies to protest at the Parades Commission decision about the Apprentice Boys annual parade on Saturday. The Commission chairman defended their rulings and said they were treating the main event and the feeder parades separately.
The Parades Commission gave the go-ahead for the annual march by over 10,000 members of the Apprentice Boys after talks between the loyal order and Bogside residents in Derry broke down. The Commission imposed several conditions about conduct. However, nationalist residents from the Bogside and the Lower Ormeau in Belfast are angry, following the decision to allow a feeder parade in South Belfast.
At a news conference, they announced plans to hold rallies and other protests. They were joined by Breandan MacCionnaith of the Garvaghy Road residents in Portadown. Orangemen have been protesting over the blocked Drumcree march for over a year and he claimed that the Parades Commission had come under political pressure after they met the British Prime Minister in London last week. He said that the Ormeau parade was being used to prepare the ground to force an orange march through their area in the near future.
The Parades Commission chairman, who met a Belfast Sinn Fein delegation this morning, said that the Belfast and Derry parades had been treated separately. He also expressed disappointment that the residents groups had not given them clear assurances that they would act within the law on Saturday, although they had said that any protests would be peaceful and legitimate. A government spokesman said that it was continuing to monitor the parades issue through its staff at the joint secretariat in Belfast.
