The leader of the SDLP has described the International Monitoring Commission and Cory reports as a "watershed in the [peace] process".
Following an an hour of talks in Downing Street with British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair, Mr Durkan told journalists: "We made the point to him that . . . . those people who were in denial about collusion on the one hand or ongoing paramilitary activity on the other, can no longer escape in denial and evasion in the way that they have in the past. So the road markings of truth are starting to be painted into this process again and it is about time.
"Those road markings have to stay there very clearly if we are going to move forward on a moral basis to making sure that we achieve an end of paramilitarism, that we achieve a basis for moving forward politically on a credible and clear and consistent way."
Mr Durkan said the kind of sanctions threatened yesterday in the IMC report against politicians with alleged links to paramilitaries would "not have an impact in any real sense on the people they are meant to act upon".
He added: "There is a danger of a vacuum if people decide that because the IMC report spelt out a lot of truths yesterday that it was a bad day for the process. I don't think that a day when truths were told and spelt out is a bad day for this process.
Mr Durkan said he had pressed Mr Blair on calls for a public inquiry into the loyalist murder more than 15 years ago of Belfast solicitor Patrick Finucane.
Mr Durkan said: "If the Prime Minister thought that Cory and the Finucane case was off his desk, he knows now that it certainly isn't off his desk ... We are not letting up until he and his Government deliver on the full and clear promise that they gave us that if Judge Cory recommended a public inquiry into the Finucane case, there would be a public inquiry."