An international ceasefire observer is needed to monitor street violence in Belfast, according to the Alliance Party leader.
Mr David Ford said the failure of the First and Deputy First Ministers to visit riot-torn areas on both sides of the sectarian divide in the city this week underlined the need for an independent observer.
"In recent days we have seen Mark Durkan acting as SDLP leader and visiting the Short Strand, while David Trimble, as UUP leader, visited Cluan Place," the South Antrim Assembly member said.
"Why did neither of them visit both sides? Why did they not visit together? For all their rhetoric about being anti-sectarian, it seems that they are incapable of acting together as First Minister and Deputy First Minister on difficult issues."
He said that when the crunch came, "they act as tribal politicians concerned about only one side of the divide".
The police mounted an intensive security operation in east Belfast lasting into the early hours of yesterday in a renewed effort to keep rival sectarian gangs apart. The move followed a night of intensive rioting which resulted in injuries to 16 British soldiers. The PSNI Acting Chief Constable, Mr Colin Cramphorn, said last week his force was stretched to the limit following the violence.
There were sporadic petrol bomb incidents in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast overnight and some children were treated for shock when their home was attacked on Alliance Avenue.
Political wrangling has continued over the cause of the violence, following claims by Mr Alan McQuillan, the most senior police officer in Belfast, that the IRA and UVF were orchestrating the trouble and fighting their wars on the streets.
His assertion was forcibly rejected by Sinn Féin chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, who said Mr McQuillan had got it "disastrously wrong" over previous allegations of IRA involvement in disturbances and "he got it wrong here last night".
Unionists were quick to capitalise on the PSNI claims. The DUP's Mr Sammy Wilson said if republican thugs were "carrying out a war, then their political wing must bear the consequences". The DUP has mounted sustained attacks on the Belfast Agreement over the summer, citing its failure to stem violence.
A Sinn Féin TD, Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh, said he would be urging other parties in Dublin to form a "cross-party delegation of TDs to visit the interface areas in Belfast to see for themselves at first hand the plight of Irish citizens living in these areas".
He said he would report back to the Irish Government and Opposition on his visit. Mr McQuillan's assessment of the causes of violence was endorsed by Sir Reg Empey, the North's Economy Minister. He said: "Assistant Chief Constable McQuillan's analysis is accurate and to infer otherwise is totally unrealistic . . . Who else would be responsible for shooting five people in Cluan Place at the beginning of June? These incidents only have been carried out by paramilitaries."