Leading Ulster Unionist Sir Reg Empey has warned Northern voters that the DUP and Sinn Féin want Northern Ireland "carved up between them" after the Westminster elections.
Sir Reg, a parliamentary candidate in East Belfast, said the Ulster Unionists would "unite Northern Ireland, not further divide it".
Voters had a simple choice. "I do not believe that people want their country carved up between Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley. Both these men are divisive.
"...To have each section of the community operating separately, with its own leaders, is against the long-term interests of everybody here. We will achieve more by working together."
In an attack on Sinn Féin, Democratic Unionist Party MP for Lagan Valley Jeffrey Donaldson said the election gave unionists "the chance to stop Sinn Féin's electoral rise in its tracks".
Sinn Féin had increased its vote in election after election, and had set its sights on becoming the North's biggest political party.
"What sort of a message would it send to the world that the largest party in Northern Ireland is a party affiliated to a terrorist organisation that robs banks and murders people?"
Warning that "apathy is unionism's worst enemy", Mr Donaldson added: "Unionism cannot afford to let Sinn Féin reach its goal of largest-party status and, in the process, return to the bad old days of weak leadership and a concession a day to republicans."
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams told a news conference outside his party's offices on the Falls Road that, in the event of a Labour victory, Mr Blair would move quickly to revive the peace process. "I have no doubt that Tony Blair, if he returns to tenancy of Downing Street, will want to bring acts of completion to this process in his last term as prime minister."
While accepting that there would have to be a fairly rapid response to his appeal to the IRA before the initiative faded, Mr Adams refused to speculate about the timing of any IRA move. "No, I don't want to be making those type of speculative remarks.
"There are two debates, one which I have actively been encouraging with everybody else, including nationalists and republicans. And the other one is a very, very focused debate within a particular organisation, which is the IRA, and I think the least that I would say about the length and the nature of that debate the better.
"Clearly, we want a positive result to the appeal which I have made, and the quicker that's done in terms of the overall peace process the better, but it's up to that organisation to do it on its own terms and in its own time-frame."
SDLP leader Mark Durkan said Sinn Féin and the DUP were "trying to pump each other up".
"The DUP has been trying to make this an election between Sinn Féin and themselves and both of them are trying to reduce things to two party politics based on them. This is the DUP's game plan. Its deputy leader Peter Robinson has called for it for a number of years because in a two-party set up, he can declare the Good Friday Agreement a bust. Sinn Féin is playing into his hands."
The Alliance Party yesterday highlighted "the £1 billion cost from Northern Ireland public expenditure that is wasted on managing a divided society".
Party leader David Ford said: "Rather than spending on second-rate facilities for different sections of the community, Alliance believes that all this money could be much better used in providing quality services and facilities open to all and for the benefit of the whole community. There is real evidence that people actually do want to live and learn, work and play together".