THE Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, was meeting security chiefs on the Drumcree crisis at Stormont Castle last night. Hopes of a compromise were fading and a decision on the parade is now likely to be made on security grounds.
The choice facing Dr Mowlam the RUC Chief Constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, and the British Army GOC in the North, Gen Sir Rupert Smith, was understood to have boiled down to halting the march at Drumcree or allowing it to proceed through a phalanx of nationalist protesters on Portadown's Garvaghy Road.
It is understood that allowing the march to proceed along part of Garvaghy Road and then turn it away before it reaches the contentious zone has been ruled out because Orangemen would have to march through another nationalist area and there would be serious security implications.
The so-called "McCartney Plan", whereby the march would be declared lawful but the Orangemen would refrain from exercising their right on this occasion, was said to be no longer an option.
Blame for this was being apportioned to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, both of whom expressed opposition to forcing the march through when they visited Belfast this week.
A statement from the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland described their remarks as "totally unhelpful" and evidence of the "evil hand" of the Anglo- Irish Secretariat at Maryfield.
Orange sources in Portadown said local members would not have found the proposal from Mr Robert McCartney MP acceptable or realistic, regardless of what the Government said.
Mr Ahern and Mr Burke met the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and Dr Mowlam in London yesterday.
About 500 nationalist protesters lined the Garvaghy Road last night and an alarm" system was being put in place to alert residents to any attempt to route the parade through in the early hours.
Meanwhile, the Church of Ireland Primate, Dr Robin Eames, called for restraint on all sides, saying Northern Ireland could not be allowed to face a repetition of the events of last summer.
He had told officers of the Orange Order that anyone was free to attend at Drumcree Parish Church but he would not contemplate such attendance being used as an opportunity to oppose the law of the land or to confront the lawful forces of law and order".
The grand chaplain of the Orange Order in Co Armagh, the Rev William Bingham, appealed to members to support whatever decision the authorities made.
. President Bill Clinton said last night that whether the loyalist march went ahead was "a matter best left to the people of Northern Ireland and to the British and Irish governments. What I would favour is that they do nothing to try to provoke violence", he told the BBC.