Mr David Trimble has boosted a campaign - begun yesterday - to have international human rights experts called in to monitor alleged breaches of the republican and loyalist cease-fires in Northern Ireland.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World This Weekend, the First Minister-designate said he would "want to explore" the plan, begun by the Observer newspaper, for a Ceasefire Monitoring Group to take evidence from police forces on both sides of the Border, and from human rights groups such as FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror), community organisations, lawyers and victims.
Recalling Czech President Vaclav Havel's visit to the North last year, the paper suggests he might be asked to choose someone to chair such a body. And anticipating those who would doubt the practicality of such an initiative, it notes the successful international involvement thus far in other aspects of the peace process.
Two Labour MPs, Mr Frank Field and Mr Harry Barnes, also backed what they called a "historic initiative" which "could deter paramilitary lynch law".
They will table a Commons motion today urging the British government to accept the Observer's "serious and constructive" proposal which could "do much to undermine the immoral regime of paramilitary beatings and intimidation".
In an editorial, the paper said Mr Blair last week may have been right to say "an imperfect peace" was better than no peace at all: "However, when that `imperfect peace' includes a so-called paramilitary punishment beating every day, and the continued exiling of thousands of Northern Ireland citizens by terror groups, then the word peace stops having any real meaning."