A new Catholic-Protestant commission that includes an Irish Republican Army veteran and a former policeman began work Tuesday to prevent violent clashes during Northern Ireland's traditional Protestant parades this summer.The British government-appointed Strategic Review of Parading Body is seeking to defuse an age-old problem in the British territory — balancing the rights of Protestant marchers, chiefly from the Orange Order brotherhood, versus Catholics who loathe the mass demonstrations.
Such sectarian collisions triggered the rise of Northern Ireland's modern conflict in the late 1960s and have fueled widespread rioting in many summers since, most recently in 2005.
Hopes are running high this year that the new panel, in cooperation with Northern Ireland's newly formed Catholic-Protestant administration, can prevent any major sectarian clashes.
Its first action Tuesday was to meet the leaders of the 2-week-old coalition: First Minister Ian Paisley, whose Democratic Unionist Party represents the Protestant majority, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, whose IRA-linked Sinn Fein party represents most Catholics.
"We believe that through dialogue a resolution to these difficult issues can be found," McGuinness said in a brief joint statement with Paisley afterward.
The panel chairman is Paddy Ashdown, 66, a former British army officer who led Britain's Liberal Democratic Party from 1988 to 1999 and was high representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006.
To the anger of some Protestants, the seven-member panel includes Sean "Spike" Murray, an alleged commander of the outlawed IRA.
Murray was convicted in 1982 of possessing explosives and conspiring to commit explosions and spent nearly a decade in prison. After his parole, he became a leader of a protest group in Catholic west Belfast that tried to block Orange Order parades.
Last week the major Catholic-read newspaper in Northern Ireland, the Irish News, identified Murray as a current member of the IRA's seven-man command.
The panel also includes the Rev. Mervyn Gibson, a Presbyterian minister who previously oversaw an umbrella group for leaders of outlawed anti-Catholic paramilitary groups.
Gibson, a former member of Northern Ireland's mostly Protestant police force, currently serves as a chaplain to the Orange Order.
More than 100,000 Orangemen and so-called "kick the pope" bands of fife and drum parade widely throughout Northern Ireland each summer, particularly on July 12, an official holiday in the British territory.
The "Twelfth" holiday parades commemorate a 17th-century military victory by the Protestant King William of Orange versus James II, the Catholic king he had dethroned.
Ashdown's commission has been tasked with identifying the best means for preventing parade-related violence in future years.
Britain has asked the panel to produce a final report by early 2008.
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