The SDLP and Sinn Féin today clashed over the violence during Monday's Oroange Order march trough Ardoyne.
The SDLP is in "disarray" over policing policy, Sinn Féin MP Ms Michelle Gildernew claimed saying that while the SDLP's Mr Martin Morgan and Mr Danny O'Connor were urging a rethink of the party's policy towards policing boards, party leader Mr Mark Durkan still backs them.
"The party leader tells us that the Policing Board is the vehicle for accountability while other senior members are calling for the party to leave the current flawed policing structures entirely," Ms Gildernew said.
Mr O'Connor, a Larne councillor, demanded more action from the PSNI after saying his elderly mother was threatened by UDA men erecting a loyalist flag outside her home in the town.
And Mr Morgan, the former Belfast Lord Mayor, insisted his party should reconsider its position on the Board if Parades Commission restrictions on marches were flouted.
"It is obvious from these actions that the Policing Board cannot deliver accountability and the SDLP have now come to that realisation," Ms Gildernew said.
But SDLP MLA Mr Alex Attwood hit back, accusing republicans of being confused and playing into the DUP agenda.
"We now have the grotesque spectacle where the DUP want to destroy the Parades Commission and Sinn Féin are helping them do it.
"It is Sinn Féin who are in disarray, calling the Parades Commission defunct and thereby feeding the agenda of the DUP, elements in the NIO and people in the Orange Order who want to tear it down."
The West Belfast Assemblyman said that while the Parades Commission have made mistakes they have been "a force for good"
He went on to criticise the chairman of the Policing Board, Prof Desmond Rea's claim today that the PSNI had no option when it allowed loyalist supporters join the Orange march through the Ballysillan / Ardoyne interface on Monday.
While only Orange Lodge members were supposed to take part in that part of the march, loyalists joined in leading to clashes between the nationalists and police who had formed a human cordon around locals who had lined the route. Prof Rea said the police were in a "no-win situation" when they allowed the march proceed through the west Belfast flashpoint.
Mr Attwood said: "He needs to stand back and see the damage that has been done by bad government and bad policing."
Not only had the police got it wrong in Ardoyne, but they and the Northern Ireland Office had undermined the Parades Commission, he added.
PA