This newspaper has long supported the quest for a more tolerant and cohesive society in Northern Ireland.

The ending of conflict and the formation of an all-embracing power-sharing administration at Stormont appeared to create just the right atmosphere to enable that vision to be achieved. Yet, sadly, the divisions within the province seem as immutable as ever.

And, according to an open letter published in this newspaper today and signed by 160 people with first-hand knowledge of those divisions, the power-sharing administration's central policy to tackle the issue will do little to achieve that end. The policy document, Cohesion, Sharing and Integration, is chiefly the brainchild of the DUP and Sinn Fein and, according to the signatories to the letter, it needs to be rewritten.

The letter contains powerful criticism of the policy - poverty of vision; holds out only a future of sustained segregation; dispiritingly assumes that Northern Ireland's conventional politically-driven identities will survive indefinitely - and slates the suggestion that the independent Community Relations Council should be abolished.

No-one can argue with the letter's premise that we all want an integrated and tolerant society, but we all know that even as the conflict was drawing to a conclusion, new peace walls were being built and their continued existence is a matter of shame for a modern European city. But the strongest walls are still in the minds of people who have been brought up apart while living near to each other. Sinn Fein and the DUP, inevitably, reflect that polarisation, owing their respective electoral strengths to it.

Division has always been the primary evil here but tackling it in a meaningful way has never been the priority for the major political parties.

Now they have a unique opportunity to begin dismantling the barriers, if they have the will to do so.