Implementing the Belfast Agreement could be a "beacon to the world" that conflict could be resolved peacefully, SDLP leader Mr John Hume said last night.
Expressing his "deepest sympathy" with the US people, he urged all sides in the North to offer the world some good news.
Speaking in Brighton during the British Labour Party conference, he said: "As the world lives through the dark consequences of the horrors of September 11th, there's a natural worldwide concentration on conflict resolution.
"We the people of Northern Ireland are in a position to offer that world some much-needed good news. We can show the world that dialogue . . . can map a course away from despair, darkness and death.
"We can highlight the fact that there is another way and we can do that by making the Good Friday Agreement a beacon for the world in these dark and uncertain times".
He was speaking at a fringe meeting alongside Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid, who warned that the chance for peace would not last forever.
Per head of population, the number of people killed by terrorist violence in Ulster was the equivalent of 480,000 Americans, he noted.
He said: "There is a very cold wind blowing against terrorism and the use of violence throughout the world. We have a unique opportunity in Northern Ireland because we have a door of opportunity which has been opened up to allow those, who in former times took up arms, in the new context of a democratic Northern Ireland to come through that door and out of the cold".
He said he agreed with Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams's reaction to the US atrocities that terrorism was "ethically indefensible".
But it followed that the arms and bombs used to carry out the attacks could not be defended either, Dr Reid said.
PA