The Orange Order has warned that trouble may break out in the North this summer if the Drumcree parade is rerouted again. Mr David Jones, a spokesman for the organisation in Portadown, Co Armagh, said there was unlikely to be a repeat of last year's relatively low-key protest at the ban.
"Come the ninth of July, if we are still on the Drumcree hillside, it is going to be the responsibility of the government as to what might happen after that," he said.
The spokesman for the Garavaghy Road Residents Coalition, Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, criticised the comments. He said: "There is a very implicit threat of violence coming through from the Orange Order. The government has a duty not to allow those who are threatening violence to win."
Yesterday, Orangemen on Drumcree hill marched to RUC lines to protest about the continuing ban on their parade going down the Garvaghy Road. Mr Jones said the protest reflected increasing anger among Portadown loyalists, who have not been allowed down the road since 1997. They claim to have maintained an Orange presence on the hill beside the Church of Ireland Drumcree parish church since.
However, Mr Jones said: "The unfortunate thing is, if you stand on a hillside quietly saying nothing, nobody takes any notice and nobody is interested.
"It is not until you start to have protests that people realise you are still there."
Over the past two years the Orangemen and members of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition have attended several British government-sponsored proxy talks aimed at resolving the dispute. However, the discussions have failed.
Mr Mac Cionnaith said: "Orangemen in Portadown do not seem so far to have been able to mobilise the numbers for their protest but I think that will change in coming weeks."
Earlier yesterday, RUC officers and British soldiers were deployed at Drumcree after Orangemen forced their way through police lines at the Co Armagh church.