Mark Durkan used his leader's address to insist that the SDLP would not be rushing into a formal alliance with any one party in the Republic in the near future.
He said his party had transformed politics across Ireland through co-operation with the main parties in the Republic and forecast that new political associations would form over time.
"Ireland would not have got to this new dispensation without the SDLP," he said, "and the SDLP could not have succeeded in that enterprise without our strategic collaboration with all southern parties."
He said the new dispensation "would create new possibilities for political realignment, both within the North and across the island".
"We are very comfortable that other parties, not least some of the southern parties, are now recognising this too," he added. "They have - or will be - establishing their own channels for considering these questions. The SDLP have been - and will be - engaging with them."
The possibilities opened up by the new political dispensation brought about by devolution were "too precious and the prospects too important for anyone to make decisions now that are forced or false," he said.
"As others rightly approach this potential strategically and gradually, so do we. We do so with proper caution for a healthy political equilibrium in the North and unmistakable ambition for a fulfilling dynamic in island-wide politics," he said.
Addressing an audience which included a strong delegation from Fianna Fáil headed by Dermot Ahern, as well as guests from Fine Gael, Labour and the Ulster Unionists, Mr Durkan said an SDLP working group on all-Ireland politics and realignment "will develop our thinking".
He said his party needed to create "a coherent framework to consider all the relevant issues, implications and ideas" and forecast that the permutations for forging "new and evolving political axes will be more varied and versatile than a lot of comment to date has suggested".
Such a process would help rejuvenate his party and attract new members. He rejected criticism that the SDLP was confined by its origins and organisation within Northern Ireland.
"In some ways, we are the most powerful party in Irish politics. Because we have changed the policies of every other party on the island. Without changing a single principle of our own or sacrificing a single value." The party was "proud both of our roots in the North and of our role in the life of the nation".
Founded out of the non-violent civil rights movement, he said his party did not have to apologise for having been formed in the North. "We challenged and changed the conditions that led to our foundation and attitudes that opposed us for so long. From our station in the North, the SDLP set the compass for all the main parties in the South through the darkness and turbulence of the troubles."
Announcing a detailed examination of the potential of all-Ireland associations with other parties, he said: "We will engage with each other and with others on the basis that we have always been and always will be constitutional nationalists and democratic republicans."
Mr Durkan criticised both Sinn Féin and the DUP over their role in government since devolution on May 8th, portraying both parties as inconsistent, complacent and guilty of policy U-turns.