Leaders of Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood, the Orange Order, called Sunday for negotiations with Catholics after police restricted one of the group's major marches for the 10th straight year.The annual confrontation between Orange marchers and British security forces near the overwhelmingly Protestant town of Portadown triggered rioting across Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s, but has caused much less trouble in recent years.
On Sunday, as has been the case for the past three years, Orange leaders marched in their traditional conservative suits and orange vestments — some also sporting bowler hats and carrying blunt-edged swords — to the police barricade and handed over a letter of protest.
The Orangemen and their followers then walked back to their cars and left, rather than stay for days and nights on end in a stubborn test of wills, the group's previous inflammatory tactic.
Since 1998 police have refused to permit the Protestants to parade back into Portadown through the town's major Catholic district, where anti-Orange sentiment runs high.
Orangemen in Portadown long vowed never to enter negotiations with the Catholic activists opposed to Orange parades, particularly their leader, a former Irish Republican Army prisoner named Breandan MacCionnath.
But after handing over the group's protest letter to police, Portadown Orange leader Darryl Hewitt said he was ready to meet MacCionnaith and other Catholic representatives from the town's Garvaghy Road.
"We are committed to face-to-face talks under an independent chairman, with no preconditions. All options are open," Hewitt said.
The Catholic protesters say they doubt the Orangemen's motives and don't want to enter into any talks that would end with renewed Orange parading through their area.
Since Northern Ireland's foundation as a predominantly Protestant part of the United Kingdom in 1921, the Catholic minority has criticized the summertime tradition of mass Orange parades as designed to intimidate and insult them.
They cite the parades' use of so-called "kick the pope" bands of fife and drum, as well as songs with overtly anti-Catholic themes.
The last major standoff outside Portadown ended in 1998 after a Protestant arsonist burned to death three Catholic children during riots in another town.
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