The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, has called on nationalists in the North to outline, "in realistic terms", what they needed to validate their sense of identity.
But speaking at the Ulster Unionist Party conference in Newcastle, Co Down, on Saturday, he said unionists would not agree to anything that undermined the rights of the people of Northern Ireland, still less any Trojan horse that would "trundle us into a united Ireland".
He urged the replacement of the Anglo-Irish Agreement with "a broader British-Irish agreement that deals with the totality of relationships within these islands".
The most contentious of these relationships was between Belfast and Dublin. There was no problem with practical North-South co-operation on pragmatic grounds and there never had been. "The problem is not practicalities. The problem is that northern Nationalists want something that validates their sense of identity," Mr Trimble said.
In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Trimble argued there was no alternative to participation in the Stormont talks process. "Does anyone really think that a new process, made necessary by unionist boycotts, will be more favourable to unionists?"
His party was not going to renegotiate the Union and had no mandate to do so. That matter was subject to "the inviolable right of the greater number of the people of Northern Ireland, and Northern Ireland only, to determine their constitutional destiny".
Mr Trimble received a warm reception from delegates although, during a debate on constitutional affairs, some speakers disagreed with the decision to take part in the Stormont talks.
Mr Ian Crozier, one of the younger delegates, quoted the party's general election guide which stated that Sinn Fein would not be let into the talks without a partial handover of IRA weapons beforehand.
"The subsequent action of the leadership has made a liar out of me, out of every candidate and out of every person who campaigned in the general election, and no half-baked consultation process will change that fact," he said.
The UUP deputy leader, Mr John Taylor, missed the conference due to illness. However, it emerged at the conference that Mr Taylor has invited the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, to address the annual dinner of his Strangford constituency association on November 14th.