The Church of Ireland Primate spoke yesterday of his frustration at the failure to resolve the Drumcree standoff. Orangemen want to march down the nationalist Garvaghy road.
Dr Robin Eames said: "With every day that passes failure by governments, mediators, politicians and the churches to find a solution becomes more and more intolerable."
He told the Armagh Diocesan Synod that, "allied to this failure and contributing greatly to the frustration I and others feel, is the failure of the authorities to produce any single method of resolving the dispute in which both parties can have confidence.
"Short of face-to-face dialogue, which the order does not feel is possible, I have been encouraged by those within Orangeism who are trying to move ahead."
He called on the British government to tackle the "sophisticated and sinister culture" developed by paramilitaries in the aftermath of the Troubles.
The demise of widespread terrorist activity had not ended the culture of violence, he said. "Real IRA" members continued to threaten the community, seemingly untouched by the misery of the Omagh bomb atrocity, while loyalist paramilitaries engaged in "intimidation, murder and arson" on the Shankill Road.
At the Derry and Raphoe Diocesan Synod, Bishop James Mehaffey said: "What is required is substantial confidence-building actions from all the paramilitary groups which will convince the entire community the war is over and paramilitary violence has no place whatever in the pursuit of peace and justice."
