The incoming leader of the SDLP said yesterday that the breakthrough on the issue of decommissioning of IRA weapons should not be allowed to overshadow the emotions being felt by the families of the victims of the North's violence.
Mr Mark Durkan also said that delegates attending Saturday's meeting of the Ulster Unionist Party in Belfast should accept at face value and not begrudge the IRA's move.
"It is time for us to move on but we have to be sensitive and remember that at a time like this, when many of us are optimistic and purposeful, we do need to remember there are a lot of people who will have mixed emotions," he told reporters in Derry.
"They are the people such as victims and people who have lost loved ones. Just as they did with the ceasefire, they are now experiencing an added twist of futility in terms of what they suffered and what they lost.
"When they see movement like this happening, it makes their grief all the harder and also they worry that the rest of us are going to leave them in some form of forgottenhood as we move on and not understand the loss they are still trying to come to terms with. All of us need to show sensitivity to them," he said.
Mr Durkan also said many of those attending Saturday's UUP meeting never believed the IRA would decommission its weapons.
"I would ask them to concentrate on the fact that we now have delivery via General de Chastelain in terms that they maybe didn't expect. Rather than begrudge it they should take it at face value and for what it's worth. They will not stop being unionists by taking this positively. They will not cease to be unionists by going back into government. They don't have to give up any of their own scepticism as to what is going on, but if these people believed for many years people not decommissioning was a ploy, why then the big criticism when decommissioning has actually been achieved?"