Belfast Braces

Fears rose Friday of violent clashes during a controversial Protestant march along Belfast's biggest "peace line" — a chain of corrugated iron walls and fences that separate the most hard-line Catholic and Protestant areas.

Saturday's parade by the Orange Order brotherhood marks the start of two weeks of hotly disputed annual marches throughout Northern Ireland by the province's major Protestant organization. Catholics have vowed to mount their own mass protest nearby, with riot police required to keep the two sides apart.

The parade and protests were scheduled a day before David Trimble's expected resignation Sunday as leader of Northern Ireland's joint Catholic-Protestant government, cornerstone of the 1998 peace accord.

Negotiations this week failed to deter Trimble from quitting in protest over the Irish Republican Army's refusal to disarm in support of the accord. His departure could lead within weeks to the coalition's collapse.

Late Friday, a government-appointed Parades Commission revised its earlier ruling that Orangemen must avoid a Protestant street that runs close to Catholic areas in Clonard, west Belfast, a power base for the outlawed IRA.

The seven-member commission — which tries to minimize conflict between Protestant marchers and Catholic protesters each summer in Northern Ireland — decided that only the fife-and-drum bands that accompany the marchers should be diverted to a side street.

Saturday's route involves Orangemen marching past Protestant houses on Ainsworth Road onto a major thoroughfare, Springfield Road — at that point a no-man's land between the communities.

Their nearby destination is an isolated Orange hall. They pass within a few hundred yards, but not through, several Catholic-occupied streets.

Catholic hard-liners since 1996 have been trying to get the march abolished completely. Their arguments that the marches were menacing and anti-Catholic were bolstered last year, when the Orangemen allowed their parade to feature uniformed members of outlawed anti-Catholic paramilitary groups.

Orangemen said they regretted that and wouldn't let it happen again, a pledge dismissed by the Catholic side.

"They're sending a message to my community that might is right," said Frances McAuley, leader of the Catholic protesters. "Talk to no one, engage with no one, break every rule in the book, and you'll get everything you want."

As part of its usual instructions to marchers, the commission said Orangemen should "refrain from using words or behavior which could reasonably be perceived as being intentionally sectarian, provocative, threatening, abusive, insulting or lewd."

Trimble, a Protestant leader who rose to prominence in 1995 by championing the Orangemen's right to march, said after meeting the Parades Commission Friday that its members had demonstrated clear bias in favor of Catholic protesters.

He urged the commission to allow Orangemen to parade past Catholic hoes on Garvaghy Road in Portadown, the bitter spiritual base for the two-century-old organization.

The biggest Portadown parade — banned from Garvaghy Road since 1997 — is scheduled for July 8. Conflict over its route fueled protracted rioting in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

"In their determinations, the commission set great store by the need to balance the competing rights of the Portadown District (Orange Order) with the Garvaghy Road residents," Trimble said.

"Yet I pointed out that in over 150 determinations, the commission has recognized and preferred the rights of the protesting residents. … The rights of the Portadown District have yet to be recognized on even one occasion by the present commission," said Trimble.

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