UNIONISTS have criticised the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, for suggesting that an apology from Protestant business people for their involvement in the Drumcree standoff or subsequent Orange blockades could end the Catholic boycott of their businesses.
Mr Hume said those shopkeepers who had engaged in provocative behaviour during the Drumcree period should now apologise for their actions.
"I am in no doubt that there were some shopkeepers who were quite provocative and who caused the boycotting of their shops by their provocative behaviour. Those shopkeepers should apologise", he told BBC Radio Ulster at the weekend.
"I think that everyone has to do everything in their power to remove boycotting from our midst because it is another of those symptoms that we can do without, and it gives a very bad image to our society," he added.
Nationalists who said that the boycott was understandable were responding to "the fact that shopkeepers may have been insulting to the people who were shopping in their shops", he said.
But the former Ulster Unionist Party lord mayor of Belfast, Mr Reg Empey, said Mr Hume should reconsider his remarks. "This has to be the most dangerous and insidious statement John Hume has ever made. Everybody should be concentrating their efforts on getting this situation dampened down", he said.
Many of those business people being boycotted were not members of the Orange Order and did not take part in any of the protests in Drumcree.
Mr Sammy Wilson, the DUP press officer, said Mr Hume was endorsing "the sectarian campaign that his co religionists are now carrying out against Protestants".
