SINN Fein is voluntarily rerouting a hunger strike commemorative parade next month away from Protestant areas of Belfast. The party is calling on loyalists to show "the same flexibility" over their marches.
The decision was announced yesterday by a party councillor Mr Alex Maskey, who said it was taken to defuse the rising tension over controversial parades in Northern Ireland.
The rally on May 5th will commemorate the 15th anniversary of the hunger strike in 1981. Several thousand republicans are expect to take part. Marchers from all over Belfast will converge on Dunville Park on the Falls Road.
Mr Maskey announced that republicans marching from Twinbrook and Poleglass would not pass Blacks Road where Protestants live. Republicans in the lower Ormeau would not parade down the road past the loyalist Donegall Pass area, he added. Instead, they would be bussed to west Belfast.
"Sinn Fein took this decision to reduce tension on the streets of the North," Mr Maskey said. "We would call on the Orange Order to do the same and to respect the rights of nationalists.
"We are making a gesture of goodwill towards the loyalist community. Our marchers will not pass their areas because residents have complained. We have respected their complaints regardless of whether we feel they are real or contrived."
Meanwhile, the Orange Order is refusing to disclose its plans to protest against the RUC decision to reroute a parade away from the lower Ormeau on Sunday.
Orangemen met on Tuesday night to decide a response but are not expected to release details of their protest until tomorrow or Saturday. They are expected to hold some form of gathering on Ormeau Bridge to express anger at the ban. But it is understood that they wish to avoid clashes with the RUC.