Mark Devenport reports: Drumcree problem will remain very difficult to resolve

Northern Ireland's Parades Commission ordered the Orangemen to keep away from the area in July after objections from Catholic residents and fears of sectarian clashes.

Their protest came as Ulster Unionist leader and Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble called on the government to scrap the commission.

Around 400 police and 350 troops sealed off Catholic areas of the County Armagh town.

Screens were erected to separate marchers from residents

The Orangemen were marching to a churchyard in Drumcree where leaders of the Orange Order have staged a vigil since the parade ban was imposed in July.

Security forces erected large screens as the Orangemen, accompanied by bands of drummers and pipers, passed the Garvaghy Road and its Roman Catholic Church.

About 200 Catholic men and teenagers gathered but there was no contact with the marchers.

The Orangemen marched up to police lines barring their way from the Garvaghy Road and handed in a letter of protest.

There was booing and heckling as they were turned away but there were no repetition of the violence which marred Drumcree protests during 1998.

'We're still here'

Portadown Orangeman David Jones said they were prepared to stay at Drumcree for as long as it took to walk the Garvaghy Road.

He told a rally in the town centre: "In 1998 they tried to break us, they tried to destroy our will, but we still remain at Drumcree.

"The government and the powers that be never thought we would get past July or make it through the winter but now 1999 is here and we are still on the hill at Drumcree and we will remain there until our rights are restored."

Reverend William McCrea of Reverend Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party got a warm response as he read out a "message" for Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam.

He said: "We haven't gone away, you know. We're still here."

But local nationalists say the recent protests make it less likely the Orange Order's march will go ahead in 1999.

Garvaghy residents' spokesman Breandan MacCionnath said: "These ongoing demonstrations and the intimidation of the Catholic community - it's making the chances of that even slimmer."