By Amanda Ferguson
BELFAST, Sept 28 (Reuters) – Britain’s Northern Ireland minister will on Monday meet residents who blocked a Protestant parade from marching through a Catholic area of a Northern Irish town, and hopes to find a compromise to reduce tension.
A local lawmaker warned of “profound” consequences if the parade did not proceed in the next two days.
About 2,000 protesters including Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Claire Hanna, the leader of Irish nationalist party SDLP, blocked the route on Sunday. This led to a standoff, with both sides declining to disperse and police between them.
The attempt to hold the parade from Portadown to the nearby hamlet of Drumcree followed Friday’s lifting of an almost 30-year ban on the route. The parade had triggered unrest across British-run Northern Ireland in the run-up to a 1998 peace deal.
The head of the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition told protesters late on Sunday that he would meet Northern Ireland Minister Chris Bryant and the chief of police after receiving commitments that the march would not proceed overnight.
He asked that a small number of volunteers remain on the road through the night to ensure the commitments were not broken, the BBC reported.
“We’ve stopped them once, the process now is to stop them permanently,” Breandán Mac Cionnaith told the protesters.
Northern Ireland’s Parades Commission, set up during the original Drumcree dispute to regulate marches, permitted a smaller-than-usual parade after its initial decision to continue the ban was quashed by the High Court in August over a procedural error.
EFFORTS TO REDUCE TENSION
Bryant has the power to revoke the Parades Commission’s ruling at the request of Northern Ireland’s police, but said he had received no such request.
“I’ve made it very clear that I think it’s important that we get to a resolution and we need to find some kind of compromise. Nobody wants to perpetuate this tension and this anger,” Bryant told reporters after meeting political parties on Sunday night.
The dispute has created new tension in Northern Ireland’s compulsory power-sharing devolved government led by Sinn Fein and pro-British rivals, the Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP says the parade must go ahead.
“He (Bryant) has 24 to 48 hours to ensure the rule of law is upheld and the parade proceeds,” DUP lawmaker Carla Lockhart wrote on social media after the party met the minister.
“If that does not happen, the consequences will be profound. Mob rule cannot defeat the rule of law.”
(Writing by Padraic Halpin, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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