There was a need to get away from the nationalist and unionist mindsets of the past for real politics and a new society to prevail in Northern Ireland, the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, told the Dan McAreavy Political School in Belfast, organised by the party's youth wing at the weekend.
In his address, Mr Hume placed the onus on young people to bring about a society where the two communities in Northern Ireland could work together.
He said the world had become a smaller place since the transport and communication revolutions, but there were still lessons to be learned from the past.
Thirty years of conflict had been caused by difference, an accident of birth rather than a choice, said Mr Hume, and violence was the price of refusal to accept it.
The Belfast Agreement created the circumstances where the two communities could work together, where real politics could evolve, Mr Hume said.
"Once both communities start working together through their representatives, and building that new future, then the barriers will break down and a new North and a new Ireland will evolve and in a generation or two there will be a whole new society that will be based on agreement and respect for difference," he said.
Earlier Ms Brid Rodgers, chairwoman of the SDLP team in the Northern Assembly, argued that the parades crisis could be avoided in 1999.
She blamed the parading conflicts on the refusal of small numbers of people to recognise the need for dialogue, adding: "It is self-evident that a conflict of rights can only be resolved through dialogue and accommodation. When that conflict is exacerbated by deep historic divisions and mistrust it is only by listening to and learning from each other that we can begin to build some understanding of each other's perspectives."