Northern Ireland Secretary of State Mr Peter Mandelson, yesterday issued his strongest challenge so far to the SDLP to join the North's new Police Board.
Speaking in Derry, Mr Mandelson said the "politics of boycott" had got the people of Northern Ireland nowhere and said if political parties turned their backs on the Police Board, they would be doing an enormous disservice to the public.
"It's not my place to tell the SDLP when they should make up their minds, all I would say is that the politics of boycott have never achieved anything in Northern Ireland. The politics of boycott did not bring us the Good Friday agreement and it won't bring us the new police service that we want to create in Northern Ireland either.
"The SDLP has done a very great deal in bringing about significant and substantial changes to the legislation as the result of the active role they have played in Parliament. They can play that active role even more so by joining the Police Board whose job it is to bring about putting in place those final pieces of the jigsaw to complete the picture that we want to see that will produce the new police service.
"I say to them, I say to all the political parties in Northern Ireland, please get involved, get stuck in, sign up to the new policing board so that we can deliver that new beginning and the new police service that Chris Patten and his colleagues envisaged and which he has said today is represented by the legislation that has now been agreed by Parliament," he said.
Asked what the future for policing in Northern Ireland would be if the SDLP decided not to join the Police Board, Mr Mandelson said such a decision would be questioned by people in the North.
"People would immediately question why, having come this far, having brought about all these changes and gone through all the genuine pain of debating and forging this new legislation with much of the hurt that has been involved, why we would have done so much and come this way only to let slip the final prize," he said.
The Secretary of State said anyone who turned their backs on the new Police Board would do a disservice to the Good Friday agreement.
"If people want to turn their backs on it and not participate, then they will be doing an enormous disservice not only to the new beginning in policing we want, but to the entire Good Friday agreement, so I ask all the parties involved to ask themselves whether they are going to help this process or whether they are going to hinder the creation of new policing in Northern Ireland."
During his visit to Derry, Mr Mandelson was snubbed by the city's Sinn Fein Mayor, Cllr Cathal Crumley, who declined to meet the Secretary of State.
Sinn Fein's Northern chairman Mr Gerry O'Hara, who was one of about 30 Sinn Fein protesters who heckled Mr Mandelson as he arrived at the council's civic offices, said the Mayor's absence had been decreed by his party.
During his visit Mr Mandelson met with senior police officers in Derry's RUC headquarters at Strand Road.