Talks over blocked Orange Order march in Northern Ireland end without compromise

Britain's Northern Ireland minister said talks with the Protestant Orange ​Order and residents blocking them marching through a ​Catholic area of a Northern Irish town ‌have ended ​for now without agreement to end the standoff. A large group of protesters, including Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O'Neill, blocked the route ahead of the scheduled march ‌on Sunday. This led to a standoff, with both sides declining to disperse and police remaining between them.

Residents from the Garvaghy Road will return to court on Monday in a fresh bid to overturn the lifting last week of ‌an almost 30-year ban on the route. The parade had triggered unrest across British-run Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s. It ‌was banned from following the route along the Garvaghy Road, a Catholic area in the mainly Protestant town of Portadown, in 1998, the same year as the signing of a peace deal that largely ended three decades of violence known as the "Troubles".

"This is the end of these ⁠conversations. ​We haven't come to a settled ⁠agreement, and it's a shame, but my door remains open," Britain's Northern Ireland Minister Chris Bryant said late on Thursday, after four days ⁠of separate talks with the two sides. "There's a court case on Monday. Obviously, we'll have to see how that plays out. And ​I would say that the law, in the end, is the law."

The residents, who failed to block ⁠the parade in legal challenges last weekend, will challenge the interpretation by Northern Ireland's Parades Commission of police advice over the potential for disorder. The commission, ⁠set ​up at the time of the original Drumcree dispute to regulate marches, permitted a smaller-than-usual parade after its initial decision to continue the ban was quashed by a court in August over a procedural error.

Bryant said potential ⁠compromises rejected in the talks included mediation, an option where the right to march was respected but not exercised, and ⁠where a "final march" would ⁠be allowed with no further applications made in the future. Members of the Orange Order have remained at the start of the route all week, while protesters have stayed by ‌the Garvaghy Road ‌1.5 kilometres (1 mile) away.