Belfast Agreement is being used to cement segregation in Northern Ireland rather than to deliver integration, Alliance Party delegates were told.
In his presidential address to the party's annual conference in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, Mr Colm Cavanagh told delegates the Agreement was being used to entrench the view that the North "consists of two power blocs who must be brought into mutually assured destruction".
"The Good Friday Agreement is not the ceiling of our ambition. Let it be the floor upon which we will build an integrated society," he said.
He also attacked Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble's call for a poll on North’s constitutional future on the same day as next year's Assembly elections.
With 14 months to go the next Assembly election, Mr Cavanagh said Alliance needed to look at its role in politics. He said the party should represent those who refused to be labelled either unionist or nationalist.
Mr Cavanagh’s address included a call on the Christian Churches to be more positive about mixed marriages of Protestants and Catholics; for greater encouragement for integrated education; for the conviction of paramilitaries who send people into exile; and for the pursuit in the courts of those who incite others to hatred.
Also speaking at the conference, former Alliance leader Mr Sean Neeson said political parties in the North and Britain must end their ambivalence towards the euro and accept a single currency is inevitable.
The East Antrim MLA claimed the introduction of the euro in the Republic made it all the more vital for Northern Ireland that the UK should join.
Alliance delegate Mr Stephen McSherry told the conference the standard of health services offered to the elderly was a national disgrace.
Mr McSherry called for increased spending, with the opening of more hospital beds as a short term measure to deal with the "immediate and pressing problem" of hospital overcrowding.
His criticism was echoed with South Belfast delegate Councillor Ms Geraldine Rice who said assistance offered to women when they remained at home to care for elderly relatives was insufficient.
PA