Nationalists in Northern Ireland should "grab the high moral ground" by making the first move towards conciliation on the issue of Orange marches, the chairman of the Parades Commission, Mr Alastair Graham, has said.
"It would be absolutely tremendous if the nationalist community could make that first gesture - I'm not saying precisely what that gesture should be - to which they would grab the high moral ground, from which the Orange Order would be looked on very badly in Northern Ireland if they didn't respond.
"They might be in a better position to make that gesture because we know that the people in the Orange Order, the people very often who voted No in the referendum, who are feeling beleaguered, feeling apprehensive about change in Northern Ireland, therefore don't quite have the same confidence," he told BBC Radio Five.
The commission has yet to decide the fate of on the controversial Drumcree Orange parade planned for July 5th, but Mr Graham expressed fears about the likely trend of events.
"I see no signs at the moment that there is going to be any dialogue at all, that there's going to be any unilateral gestures, and unfortunately the commission that I chair will have to take a legally binding decision which says to one group or the other, `you're not going to achieve what you'd like to achieve.' "
He conceded that nationalists in Portadown were unlikely to make the type of conciliatory gesture he spoke about unless pressure was brought to bear from the SDLP, Sinn Fein and the Irish Government. He had asked the political parties involved in the Stormont talks to interrupt their election campaigns to work for a resolution of the parades issue.
Meanwhile, the Orange Order has called for a concerted effort to ensure that Northern Ireland was well-governed, fair, just, peaceful and prosperous in a set of resolutions prepared for the Twelfth celebrations next month. The Order called for unionist "togetherness" to "preserve our British culture".