PORTADOWN'S Orangemen have claimed that Paddy Ashdown's Strategic Review Body's recommendations on contentious parades would give them what they have wanted for years in the Drumcree dispute - face-to-face talks with the Garvaghy Road residents.
A key paragraph in the recommendations by the review body - chaired by Lord Ashdown - says that if any party in a dispute is unwilling to enter talks, except in "exceptional circumstances", this will be taken into account "and it will count against t
hem".
However, the the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition says it is unimpressed with the recommendation.
In a statement issued on Tuesday - the day the recommendations were published - the Coalition dismissed the entire findings as "only potential for political interference and manipulation".
The residents added: "We fear that the majority of proposals will lead to the pre-1998 situation (when the Drumcree parade went through), would re-ignite past tensions and create further inter-cummunal unrest during the marching season."
Darryl Hewitt, District Orange Master of Portadown, said: "We have been calling for face-to-face talks for years and the GRRC keep running for cover - and the Parades Commission has been equally inactive, safe in the knowledge that they will not be with us much longer.
"We have also consistently called for the winding-up of the commission, as it has been part of the problem, far from helping to solve it. This has been especially true in the case of Drumcree.
"At the height of the dispute, both the residents group and the commission called for face-to-face talks, but now that the Orange side is willing, both groups are actually a hindrance to such talks."
However, the coalition remains impervious to talks, and is dismayed that "the Strategic Review Body's report will politicise rather than de-politicise the marching issue".
Breandan Mac Cionnaith of the GRRC said: "The report has opened the door for those who want to turn the marching issue into a political football, where political expediency will take precedence over valid human concerns.
"One only has to look at the sectarian history of Craigavon Borough Council, for example, to realise they should have no part to play in the decision-making at Drumcree."
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