Northern Ireland is girding for potential street clashes tomorrow, when the Orange Order will stage its biggest annual demonstration in Belfast -- and two smaller parades pass near hostile IRA power bases. Trouble is possible in Londonderry and several other towns and villages.
Orangemen attract curiosity and no overt hostility in the neighboring Republic of Ireland, a predominantly Catholic country that won independence from Britain shortly after Northern Ireland's 1921 creation as a Protestant-majority state.
On Saturday, several thousand Orangemen from more than 50 lodges -- including one visiting from England -- paraded peacefully in Rossnowlagh, County Donegal, a mostly Catholic seaside resort in the Irish Republic where locals watch their parade each year.
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