UK: N. IRELAND: DRUMCREE LATEST (1)

Описание: (5 Jul 1999) English/Nat

There has been trouble at Drumcree in Northern Ireland, where Protestant Orangemen trying to parade in the hostile Catholic area are camping out.

The Parades Commission - an institution set up as part of the Northern Ireland peace process - has banned the Orange Order from holding the march.

As night fell on Sunday, several skirmishes were reported and army and riot police were mobilised to quash the troubles.

Special forces helicopters had fireworks fired at them and police confronted a tense gathering at a local builder's yard.

After sunset on Sunday, the tension which had been brewing all day in Drumcree escalated.

Members of the Orange Order, gathered behind barbed wire to block them from marching in the hostile Catholic Garvaghy Road area, attempted to cross police lines.

But police and soldiers, backed up by helicopters and heavy vehicles, managed to block the loyalist protestants.

The helicopters circling the skies above had powerful fireworks hurled at them.

Later, some members of the crowd broke into a local builder's yard and used the materials there to attack police.

But police soon took control of the situation.

Within a couple of hours of the trouble starting, the area was quiet, apart from some routine police patrols.

Earlier, trouble was narrowly avoided.

Minor skirmishes between Loyalist protesters and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) led to the firing of one baton round shortly after 10 p-m (2100 GMT).

Loyalists surged towards the graveyard of St John The Baptist Catholic church.

The R-U-C drafted reinforcements into the area and army helicopters circled the field and brought in more soldiers.

The crowd backed off.

This annual confrontation has triggered widespread violence for the past three summers.

This year, army engineers erected daunting barbed wire barricades in front of the Anglican church.

About three-thousand Orange Order members and their supporters, led by victims of Irish Republican Army violence, marched earlier on Sunday from downtown Portadown to the church via a predominantly Protestant route.

Orange Order officials directed the crowd to back away from the barbed wire-strewn frontline.

The senior Orangemen marched forward to hand in a letter to senior policeman protesting against the blockade.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I would have thought the Prime Minister needs to sit down with his advisors very quickly and weight up the pros and cons and I mean he realises the intransigence of the residents and the residents don't own the road."
SUPER CAPTION: Dennis Watson, County grand master of the Orange Order

Both sides of the community consider the annual confrontation - and how British authorities manage it - a test of the two communities' relative political influence and strength.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern have challenged the Ulster Unionists to accept Sinn Fein as government partners on July 15th, without the guarantee that the I-R-A will disarm.

The attempt to push the major Protestant party towards a deal-clinching compromise came at a time when Northern Ireland's sectarian passions often boil over into bloodshed.

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