GNS: UK: N.IRELAND: WATER CANNON

(9 Jul 2000) English/Nat

Police in Northern Ireland used water cannons to disperse anti-Catholic protestors in Drumcree late on Tuesday, as trouble broke out for the third night near Portadown.

Rioters threw bricks and petrol bombs at police and soldiers who had set up a barricade to stop the protestors reaching the nationalist Garvaghy Road.

In Portadown, several hundred Protestants massed near the rows of riot police and armored cars blocking the path toward Garvaghy Road.

They fanned out into the cow pastures flanking the Anglican Drumcree church to throw petrol bombs at police lines.

In response, police deployed two Belgian-designed armored cars equipped with water cannons.

One doused the lead ranks of rioters, with the intention of forcing them back up the hill toward the church.

But the protestors held their ground and continued to throw rocks at the armoured vehicles.

The paramilitary groups co-ordinating the protests have warned that rioting will intensify unless the Orange Order, a legal Protestant fraternal group, is allowed to march through the main Catholic district of Portadown this Sunday.

Britain and the province's police commander, Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, say that won't be allowed to happen.

Annual confrontations over Orangemen's thwarted efforts to parade down the disputed Garvaghy Road in Portadown, 30 miles (50 kms) southwest of Belfast, ignited widespread street violence in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Relative peace reigned last year after Orange leaders opted not to challenge a joint police-army blockade at their Portadown march's midway point, an Anglican church near the Catholic area.

But history appears set to repeat itself with tensions and destruction mounting - and some of the province's most feared terrorists returning to the fore.

Politicians from all sides on Tuesday criticized Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, a leading Belfast member of the outlawed Ulster Defense Association who was paroled from prison this year under terms of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

Adair, infamous for boasting about his past slayings of Catholic civilians, led more than 100 supporters late on Monday to the confrontation zone outside Portadown.

Later, Adair and his entourage cheered at three masked men from a Portadown-based paramilitary group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, as they fired a volley of shots into the air from handguns.

Both the UDA and LVF are supposed to be observing cease-fires, just like the Irish Republican Army, which draws support from the most militant Catholic areas, such as Garvaghy Road.

Monday's demonstration was the first time the two anti-Catholic groups had demonstrated such a close alliance in public, a sign that extremists are taking a more co-ordinated approach to this year's violence.

On Tuesday, police set up a phone hotline to advise motorists which areas to avoid.

Protestants ran onto roadways to block cars in several places.

Those who didn't stop risked having their car pelted with missiles and stolen.

Police reported that Protestant protestors had blocked key roads in at least six other towns in Northern Ireland.

Catholic protest groups led by paroled IRA members began blocking the most controversial Orange parade routes in 1995, forcing police to decide whether to confront the protestors or the marchers.

In Portadown, a bastion of support for the conservative Protestant brotherhood, Orange leaders have refused to negotiate with the Garvaghy Road protestors.


More than 2,000 such parades are staged each summer, only a few dozen of which go through predominantly Catholic areas.

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