The SDLP's spokesman on policing, Assemblyman Alex Attwood, told the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration rally in Derry yesterday that movement on both policing and decommissioning were necessary if the potential of the Belfast Agreement was to be realised.
Addressing the same rally, the Sinn Fein Mayor of Sligo, Cllr Sean MacManus, said however that nationalists and republicans would not settle for what he called any "re-packaged RUC".
Mr Attwood told the crowd of about 5,000 at the rally at Free Derry Corner in the Bogside that the agreement was a remarkably resilient creation which, although bruised, still endured.
"It remains our best strategy and our best hope. It is time now, in the coming days and weeks to fulfil both its intention and potential. It is time to move forward on the issue of weapons, on policing, on normalisation and on the working of the institutions and that time is now."
Cllr MacManus, who will be Sinn Fein's candidate in the Sligo-Leitrim constituency in the next general election, said his party wanted to play its role in providing an acceptable police force but that the only way to do so was to implement the Patten proposals immediately.
"If the British government goes down the road of imposing the force envisaged under the current legislation, they should understand that Sinn Fein, the party that has campaigned for decades against repression and injustice, will campaign equally vigorously against any re-packaged RUC."
In a statement on behalf of the families of the 13 people shot dead and 14 wounded on Bloody Sunday 29 years ago, Mr Michael McKinney, whose brother William was one of the victims, said he was concerned at the ability of the Saville inquiry to deliver on the open and accountable investigation which had been promised by Mr Blair.