Unionist and nationalist political leaders in Northern Ireland were tonight urged to set aside their differences and work together in the new political institutions.
In a groundbreaking address to the North Down association of the Ulster Unionist Party, the new leader of the nationalist SDLP Mr Mark Durkan said their communities had "paid too big a price for too many years of growing apart".
"Now we can secure huge dividends from growing together," he urged.
"Growing together need not diminish the integrity of any tradition or identity whereas growing apart has damaged all.
"Given both real hurts from the past and real fears from the future mutual distrust between unionism and nationalism is understandable even to each other.
"We have to achieve a situation where unionism and nationalism can even more readily appreciate each other's hopes and ambitions than we understand the hurts and inhibitions."
Mr Durkan, who is also Deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive, was the first nationalist leader in Northern Ireland to accept an invitation to speak to a unionist association.
His decision to address North Down UUP members was his first act as SDLP leader.
The Foyle MLA told north Down unionists he had come to their meeting at the Clandeboye Lodge Hotel to speak but also listen to their concerns.
He did so as "a democrat, as a nationalist and most significantly, as an equal".
Unionists and nationalists, the Deputy First Minister said, have devoted too much time to undermining each other's legitimacy and cherished institutions and aspirations.
The Good Friday Agreement, he said, had allowed both communities to acknowledge each other's legitimacy and had provided them with shared institutions.
Mr Durkan said: "The fact that the Agreement and its implementation can provide such a valuable democratic common denominator between unionist and nationalist, loyalist and republican should not be resented as a threat or be taken for granted by any of us.
"All pro-Agreement parties have contributed too much already to allow difficulties to frustrate the mandate for the Agreement or promote shortsighted stances.
"This is a time when we all have to ask what we can do for the Agreement - not just what the Agreement can do for us.
"Parties owe it to the people who have willed the Agreement. Parties owe it to themselves and more importantly owe it to each other."
PA