Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has indicated that the Government feels that a return Love Ulster march in Dublin is not feasible or appropriate despite head of Fair William Frazer yesterday saying he hoped the parade could be restaged in the capital.
Mr Ahern said in Belfast yesterday that he favoured some alternative method, such as the former Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, for dealing with reconciliation rather than a repeat of the parade.
Earlier in Belfast yesterday, Mr Frazer, of the south Armagh Protestant victims' group Families Acting for Innocent Victims (Fair), said the Government had a responsibility to ensure that the Love Ulster parade, which was aborted in Dublin last Saturday due to rioting, could safely take place. However at a Belfast press conference he stopped short of saying the parade definitely would happen.
"We would like to go back as soon as possible. But there is a lot of questions that are going to have to be answered by members of the Dáil and gardaí.
"We want reassurances from them. We don't want to have people batoned off the streets of Dublin so we can parade down through Dublin."
Pressed on whether he thought the parade eventually would be staged, he would only say: "I hope it happens."
Mr Ahern, who met the head of the North's Human Rights Commission, Prof Monica McWilliams, yesterday, suggested that the focus now should be on reconciliation rather than on a return parade. He suggested the National Forum for Peace and Reconciliation as a possible means of addressing the issues of victims.
"The only way you can do that [achieve reconciliation] is by sitting around a table; not by demonstrating, not by throwing bricks, not by waving flags in such a way that is regarded as confrontational by another side."
Asked was he implicitly stating that the Love Ulster parade had caused offence, he said words should not be put in his mouth.
However he added: "We live in a democracy. People have an entitlement to march, people have an entitlement to do so in a way that does not cause offence. They have an obligation to do it in a way that does not cause offence."
He referred to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, and said perhaps the issue of reconciliation should be addressed on a "more long-term" basis "where people like Willie Frazer and his people could articulate their feelings at something like that without in any way discommoding the feelings of other people.
"If we can provide another way I think it would then obviate the necessity for anyone to march and feel that they have to march."
