The SDLP should serve in a voluntary coalition excluding Sinn Fein at Stormont, UK Unionist leader Mr Robert McCartney said tonight.
After a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair in Downing Street, Mr McCartney claimed the SDLP would boost its flagging popularity by forming a coalition administration at Stormont with unionists.
The North Down MLA urged the Irish, British and US governments to persuade the party to back the idea coalition in the review of the Belfast Agreement which began last week.
"Their future does not lie in pursuing [former SDLP leader] John Hume's holy grail of Irish unity in league with Irish republicans.
The UK Unionists are one of three parties backing a voluntary coalition at Stormont if devolution returns. The Alliance Party and the Democratic Unionists have also backed the idea.
Mr McCartney said today with concern mounting in Dublin about the electoral growth of Sinn Fein in the Irish Republic, he believed Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's government could be persuaded to back the idea of a voluntary coalition.
"A voluntary coalition involving the DUP, SDLP and the Alliance Party on the current Assembly figures would put Sinn Fein out in the cold democratically until it had addressed the issue of the IRA," he added.
SDLP MLA Mr Patsy McGlone dismissed the comments.
"For a man who splits his own party it is a bit rich for him to call coalitions with others.
"The SDLP is clear that the best way for us to overcome our division is for all parties to work around the one table together," Mr McGlone said.
The SDLP would persist with its policy of pursuing unification, he added.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair today also met loyalist Progressive Unionist leader Mr David Ervine.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, and Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy met parties at Stormont as part of the review of the Agreement.
The general secretary of the Alliance Party, Mr Stephen Farry, said after their meeting with the two governments that while they were pleased with the level of interest shown in their proposal for amending the Agreement, there still appeared to be "an absence of trust" between the parties about the internal arrangements for Northern Ireland.
PA