The Parades Commission in Northern Ireland has agreed to meet the nationalist residents' group from Portadown's Garvaghy Road. Last week, the residents issued a joint statement with other groups calling for the commission's resignation.
In a letter to the Garvaghy Road group, the chairman of the Parades Commission, Mr Alistair Graham, said the joint statement "comprises a litany of inaccuracies". Replying yesterday, the Garvaghy residents said Portadown nationalists had no confidence in the commission.
In his letter Mr Graham denied a charge by the residents' groups that he spent the day of the Drumcree parade on July 6th with the Portadown Orange Lodge.
"This is patently untrue. Not only did I speak to several residents on the Garvaghy Road but I appeared on a number of television channels as a spectator of the events immediately before, during and after the Orange procession there," he writes.
He also denied the residents' claim that he was "present at meetings between the British government and the Official Unionist Party" aimed at encouraging the UUP to stay in the Stormont talks.
Mr Graham commented: "As I am sure the government and the Ulster Unionist Party would have no hesitation in confirming, neither I nor any other member of the Commission have ever, either individually or collectively, been present at such meetings nor is it appropriate that we ever should be."
The letter continued: "In spite of this the commission has agreed to meet you, not for the purpose of dwelling on the events of the past six months, but to hear your views on our proposals about how we will perform our statutory role and secure a better basis for taking future decisions on contentious parades."
Replying, the chairman of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, accused Mr Graham of making "clearly partisan and prejudiced statements" before and after the Drumcree parade.
He also condemned "the silence of commission members in relation to the RUC/British military invasion and curfew of the Garvaghy Road" and the "failure of commission members to publicly condemn the many human rights abuses which occurred in the Garvaghy Road area on July 6th".
The Garvaghy Road residents intended to discuss these and other points with the commission. "As you will appreciate, it is our view that these points clearly demonstrate the inability of the commission to act in an objective, fair and impartial manner in relation to contentious parades," Mr Mac Cionnaith continued.