The SDLP today urged Unionists to have some input into the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation being reconvened in Dublin tomorrow.
Speaking ahead the Forum's first meeting since 1996, SDLP negotiator Mr Sean Farren said the involvement of unionists in "some shape or form" in the body would be welcome.
He also urged parties to lend their weight through the Forum also involving Sinn Féin, to the demand for an end to paramilitarism.
With parties on both sides of the Border signing up in the Belfast Agreement to the principle of Irish unity by consent - something the Forum failed to agree upon when it last met - Mr Farren told reporters that should make unionists feel more comfortable about participating.
"One of the big fears that unionists had was that the South would ride roughshod over their rights by ignoring, as they claimed, the significance of the consent principle," the North Antrim MLA argued.
"Now that that is enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement, it weakens the case, I think, for unionists from being absent from the Forum because they cannot claim, as they did before, that they are not recognised, that their case is not constitutionally recognised.
The Forum which was established by former taoiseach Mr Albert Reynolds in the wake of the 1994 IRA ceasefire involved parties on both sides of the border and received submissions from community and voluntary groups, business leaders, trades unions and church leaders.
It was also addressed by leading international figures like former South African President F W de Klerk and Senator George Mitchell before he chaired the Stormont talks.
PA