Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain is to launch an independent rethink on how to deal with unsolved murders during the Troubles.
Mr Hain believes it is time to re-examine the period which left around 3,000 dead and countless more injured.
There has been a series of public inquiries into past events like Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British soldiers shot dead 13 civil rights protesters and civilians, but the minister wants a cheaper solution.
A Northern Ireland Office source said: "There's no question of government trying to impose solutions because that would not work and we have to see if we can reach a consensus on how we deal with the past."
He said the initiative, covering the 30 years of conflict and expected to take 18 months, would take into account all views.
A victims' commissioner is to be appointed to champion the needs of those who have suffered. The interim commissioner, Bertha McDougall, said there should be a fund established for their benefit.
She also called for a victims' forum and increased payouts to those bereaved earlier in the Troubles. In addition to Bloody Sunday, which has cost around £200 million, there are three other inquiries into controversial deaths where collusion between the killers and the security forces has been alleged.
These are estimated to cost around £17.5 million. They include - the shooting of Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright at the Maze Prison on December 1997 by republican Irish National Liberation Army gunmen; the death of Rosemary Nelson a Catholic lawyer from Lurgan, Co Armagh, killed by a loyalist car bomb in 1999 outside her home despite warnings to the security forces that she was under threat; the murder of Catholic Robert Hamill beaten to death by a loyalist mob in the centre of Portadown in 1997 while police allegedly looked on.
Another inquiry into the murder by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association of Catholic solicitor Pat Finucane in February 1989 has yet not opened.
The Assembly's Committee of the Centre, which scrutinises the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister, is to hear evidence on the matter in the search for a solution.
Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde has set up a special team of detectives to probe more than 3,000 unresolved deaths but has warned of the shortcomings of re-examining so many files dating as far back as 1969.
The South African truth and reconciliation process is one model considered but largely discounted as ill-suited to Northern Ireland. Many victims see the complete immunity from prosecution necessary to elicit public confessions by killers as distastef