SDLP leader Mark Durkan has called on the British government to engage in talks with all political parties in order to bring about the implementation of the Belfast Agreement.
Speaking after his meeting with the Northern Secretary, Paul Murphy, Mr Durkan said he had told the Northern Ireland Secretary that if he handled the current political deadlock properly, he could not only deliver the return of devolution but also the implementation of all aspects of the Belfast Agreement.
To do this, Mr Durkan said, the British would need to engage not just with the Irish Government but with all the political parties.
The Foyle MLA, who was joined at the meeting by deputy leader Brid Rodgers, party chairman Alex Attwood and Policing Board member Joe Byrne, defended his idea that the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation should also be reconvened in Dublin to help find a way out of the impasse.
Expressing surprise at the Alliance Party's reservations about the forum, the SDLP leader said: "The Alliance Party are obviously entitled to voice their reservations.
"Certainly when I discussed this idea with their leader David Ford a couple of weeks ago that was not the terms in which he addressed the issue and indeed he indicated a degree of comfort with what we were saying and a degree of interest in the reasons that we were giving.
"We don't see the forum as being a distraction from anything. It will not be a rival to the sort of all-in exercise and all-out effort that is needed here among the parties and the two governments.
"It can actually contribute very usefully because let's be clear as far as confidence issues about the future activity and existence of paramilitaries are concerned, would it be right for people to misrepresent the requirements for an end to paramilitarism as just a unionist demand or even a high handed insistence from the British Government?
"Is it not right that we can use a more Irish national democratic context to show that that requirement of the Agreement is something that is the intent and will of the Irish people at large because it was the Irish people at large who voted for the Agreement?
"Paul Murphy did not vote for the Agreement.
"The people of Ireland did. So let the Forum reflect on that in a very useful and positive way."
PA