Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Mr Seamus Mallon has warned that police reform will not work if a "patch-up job" is used to cover nationalist concerns.
The SDLP's deputy leader said the British government knew what was required to ensure its participation. The party is under intense pressure to join the new police board,.
He told BBC Northern Ireland's Hearts and Mindsprogramme: "I think there is a realisation beginning to dawn on people that there is a problem. There is a problem for the nationalist community here, there is a problem for the SDLP.
"We don't want to see an Elastoplast job done on this, so that it might last for another two months or three months but won't get to the heart of the problem," he said.
The SDLP has issued a number of demands that it says must be met before it embraces the new police service. These include enhanced powers for district policing committees and the police ombudsman, the merger of Special Branch and CID, the closure of Gough Barracks in Armagh and a guaranteed change to the badge and symbols of the new service.
Nationalist acceptance of the new police reforms was one of the main issues discussed during two days of intensive negotiations involving Prime Minister Tony Blair and the local parties.
Unionists have called on the SDLP to accept the new policing service, while Sinn Fein, which is calling for more change, has urged the party to resist breaking nationalist consensus on the issue.
Mr Mallon said he believed the political process was now fast approaching its moment of truth.
"What is beginning to evolve out of this is a realisation that there are four separate problems but they are all the one problem in the sense that they are all interlinked.
"Those problems are the very obvious ones: policing, demilitarisation, normalisation and the retention and protection of the institutions," he said.
Mr Mallon said one of the problems was that each of the issues had been treated as a separate box, but that the parties had to solve all the boxes.
"There is a recognition that each of the political parties has a responsibility for all of those four issues and that applies to the unionist parties, to ourselves, to Sinn Fein and the other political parties."
He accepted that leading members of his own party were keen for the SDLP to join the Police Board.
"You are always going to have to find that in every political party. The reality is it was my responsibility to do the negotiations. That is not the easiest thing in the world.
"But having got that responsibility then I think I have got a responsibility to ensure two things: one that we get the type of resolution that is capable of working, that it will change the face of policing within the nationalist community. "And secondly that it will last. The last thing I want to see and I believe the last thing anybody wants to see is a patched up job on policing. Either it is got right or it isn't got right and I am adamant it can be got right," he added.
PA