BARRICADES HALT MARCH BY IRISH PROTESTANTS.

Byline: Shawn Pogatchnik Associated Press 

Protestants looked at army barricades blocking the town walls that they had planned to march on Saturday, and they chose to take their stand another day.

The 15,000-strong Apprentice Boys, the pro-British Protestant fraternal order in this mostly Catholic town, decided not to face off with soldiers. Instead they marched through the predominantly Protestant east side of Londonderry.

The British soldiers had erected barbed-wire barricades along the Protestants' intended route along the town's 17th-century walls, which overlook the Catholic Bogside district below. Officials feared widespread Catholic rioting if they didn't prevent the march. Catholic protesters last year were forced off the walls to make way for the Apprentice Boys.

Catholics breathed a sigh of relief Saturday, but feared retaliation. Protestant leaders did not try to calm their fears.

``It is our firm intention to walk these city walls at a time of our own choosing,'' said Alistair Simpson, governor of the Apprentice Boys. He spoke after the group's traditional service inside St. Columb's, the first Protestant cathedral built in Europe after the Reformation.

Groups of tough-faced men accompanying the marchers started drinking heavily around 11 a.m. Police, coming under a barrage of beer cans and rocks, arrested several at the end of the march.

Simmering tensions didn't boil over, but it was a close call.

``The decision to defer walking the walls was a sensible one, considering the mood in the city at this time,'' said Martin McGuinness, reputedly the town's IRA commander in the 1970s. ``But there is still an understood threat to parade those walls at some point in the future.''

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Photo: Children chat with British soldiers Saturday in Belf ast after a Protestant-Catholic confrontation was averted in Londonderry.

Associated Press