Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has expressed concern about continuing sectarian attacks in Northern Ireland as tension mounts about tomorrow's rerouted Orange Order Whiterock parade in west Belfast.
Mr Ahern visited Belfast yesterday to meet Sinn Féin and the SDLP, and also community activists who work on both sides of the sectarian interface between the loyalist Shankill and nationalist Falls areas of west Belfast.
Mr Ahern acknowledged the community concerns after the Parades Commission rerouted the postponed Whiterock parade away from Workman Avenue, where Orangemen normally parade, onto the nationalist Springfield Road to their hall at Whiterock.
Instead Orangemen are permitted to march on to the Springfield Road through the Mackies industrial estate link. The Orange Order opposes this ruling and some Orangemen and their supporters have been holding street protests disrupting traffic in north and west Belfast to highlight their views.
Mr Ahern said the community groups told him these were "very difficult times" in terms of sectarian tensions. He said, however, that the Parades Commission ruling should be accepted.
DUP leader Ian Paisley, who in the company of Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey raised the issue with Northern Secretary Peter Hain via video link yesterday, said he feared there could be trouble tomorrow.
The Parades Commission ruling could create "something which police will not be able to handle, which nobody will handle. It could be a spark that will kindle a fire that there will be no putting out."
Mr Ahern also said in Belfast that he hoped IRA decommissioning would take place in the coming weeks. Such a move could ease the "hugely debilitating" tensions which had contributed to sectarian violence in recent weeks.
"We are aware there are moves towards the preparation of decommissioning and as I have said before, the sooner the better. There is something of a hiatus. The IRA statement was made and nothing has happened since then and there are tensions on all sides for something to happen."
He added that decommissioning would complement British military demilitarisation in Northern Ireland. It would also "send a very clear signal to all and sundry, not just the governments, but the wider community - not least the unionist community - that one very significant element of the conflict of the last 35 years would appear to be at an end".
Sinn Féin justice spokesman Gerry Kelly said "many nationalists feel vulnerable and angry at the lack of political leadership within unionism, the inaction of the PSNI and relative silence from both governments on the issue".
"The Irish Government must defend the rights of nationalists. They must stop ignoring loyalist violence and the ambivalence of the PSNI towards it. They must stand up for the rights of nationalist communities."
SDLP deputy leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell, after his party's meeting with Mr Ahern, said it "must be made clear that sectarian activity will not be tolerated from any quarter in any circumstance".
