Four days after the Drumcree stand-off began, there is little sign of any movement by politicians or community leaders to establish some basis for resolving the deadlock. On Tuesday a downbeat Mr David Trimble volunteered that progress towards this end "if any, is very slight, and it's not going to be easy".
Practically everyone on the Ulster Unionist side believes the crisis can be resolved only by some kind of Orange march down the Garvaghy Road. "It's a matter of practical politics," says one politician on the party's liberal wing.
Another senior figure with similar views says: "If there's going to be any accommodation, by definition it means some kind of parade, even a token one, must take place - the only way we can move from `no walk' is to have some form of walk."
SDLP members in the north Armagh area are equally convinced that the Garvaghy Road residents cannot be made to accept a parade this year, either one forced through or one "blackmailed" through. "It's been three-nil to the Orangemen in the past three years. At least if it's three-one after this year, it will allow the residents some kind of honourable exit," said one source.
The SDLP says the five points offered by the Garvaghy Road residents in response to Mr Trimble's open letter to them last week still provide the best basis for opening discussions. The second of these is precisely the issue which has provoked the crisis: that the Orangemen would return from Drumcree church along the route they now take for the outward journey.
The residents said that if this happened, they would publicly acknowledge it as a "reciprocation" of the agreement they made in 1995 to let the Orangemen down the Garvaghy Road, which led to the notorious show of triumphalism by the Rev Ian Paisley and Mr Trimble at its end. They also pledged that future parades to Drumcree church along the outward route, which is through an area which is becoming increasingly Catholic, would be guaranteed. They suggested that an "all-inclusive" forum, involving the two governments, politicians and local community leaders should be set up to resolve problems of future parades and sectarian tensions in Portadown. And they promised that if all this were to happen, the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition would "encourage this community to explore the possibility of an Orange presence on the Garvaghy Road in the future".
This list might provide a basis for discussion if it were not for two vital - and utterly undermining - provisos on the part of the Orangemen. They are absolutely adamant that part of any agreement must include the right of the Orangemen to march down the Garvaghy Road this year, and not in any theoretical future.
They also demand that the residents' leader, Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith - or anyone else "carrying terrorist baggage", in the words of Portadown Orange spokesman Mr David Jones - is excluded from any forum or other negotiating body. The second of these will be a considerable sticking point: Mr Mac Cionnaith, who has been convicted of serious offences, is a particular hate figure for the town's Orangemen. But the real - and at the moment apparently insoluble - problem will be the insistence from every brand of unionism and Orangeism that the Drumcree parade must go back down the Garvaghy Road this year, and the equal determination of the Catholic residents that it will not pass.
Any remote possibility of compromise lies in the inevitable existence of different shades of opinion in the two communities. The group of people which barracked Mr Seamus Mallon after his meeting with residents' coalition leaders on Tuesday night is certainly not broadly representative of majority opinion in the Garvaghy Road.
At the same time there are at least two shades of Orangeism in Co Armagh. Firstly, there are those utterly unbending men who believe that it is their absolute right to parade down the Garvaghy Road whatever the Catholic residents might think. The local district master, Mr Harold Gracey, is typical of these.
Then there are more open-minded senior Orangemen - people such as Mr Denis Watson and the Rev William Bingham - who insist that a march must take place but would be open to discussion about its size, conduct and timing.
However there is a third element, personified by the hardline "Spirit of Drumcree" leader Mr Joel Patton. In the words of one Orangemen: "For them the `No' campaign is still being run, and they are trying to kick David Trimble when he's down."
On Tuesday night Mr Trimble had talks with Mr Watson and Mr Bingham. But no hint of any new compromise, such as a short "cooling off" period before any march, emerged from their meeting.
One nationalist source suggested that a lesson could be learned from the Derry experience two years ago, when the Apprentice Boys reluctantly agreed to parade along the city's walls not on their traditional August 12th date but at an unspecified time in the future.
However, the moves in Derry were initiated by Mr John Hume, and he was able to persuade the Apprentice Boys to attend talks with Catholic residents under his prestigious tutelage partly because of the relative weakness of Derry's Protestant community. Any equivalent meeting in Portadown would require both Mr Trimble's and Mr Mallon's presence to have any comparable credibility, and despite efforts by the two men to mount a united front, there seems little sign of that happening before what the Rev Ian Paisley has ominously called the "settling day" next Monday.
If anything, the Portadown Orangemen's line appears to be hardening. Yesterday's warning to Mr Tony Blair that unless he gives in to their demand to march he will face a confrontation between the Orange Order and the British army was an indication of just how hard the task facing Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon will be in the dangerous days ahead.