World

Key Catholic Quits N. Ireland Legislature

December 4, 2000 / 10:10 AM EST / AP

John Hume, a Nobel peace laureate and Northern Ireland's senior Catholic statesman, resigned Monday from the province's cross-community legislature, citing his overload of work and shaky health.

Hume, 63, said several months ago he planned to step down as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, a central institution forged under terms of the province's 1998 peace accord.

He was a key intellectual inspiration for that pact, which proposed a joint Catholic-Protestant government in Northern Ireland that cooperated formally with the neighboring Republic of Ireland.

But Hume had little day-to-day involvement in the workings of the Assembly since its formation two years ago. Nor did he accept the top Catholic post in the power-sharing administration drawn from the Assembly, instead handing the responsibility to Seamus Mallon, his longtime deputy in the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party.

Assembly Speaker John Alderdice announced Hume's decision to legislators Monday and said he had notified the province's election authorities. However, Hume's post was expected to be filled by one of his party activists without a by-election.

Before entering the Assembly, Hume already had much on his plate as a veteran member of both the British and European parliaments and as leader of the SDLP, which most of Northern Ireland's Catholics support.

Speculation about his ability to retain those responsibilities has mounted ever since he suffered a ruptured small intestine in August 1999.

Hume's three-decade campaign to broker cease-fires and political compromise in Northern Ireland was recognized in 1998 when he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble, the Protestant politician who today leads the power-sharing administration alongside Mallon.

Meanwhile Monday, arsonists struck a Catholic parochial hall in Ballymena and suspected pipe bombs were thrown at two homes in the predominantly Protestant towns of Larne and Coleraine. None of the attacks caused injury, police said.

They followed a pattern of intimidation, often against specific families, by Northern Ireland's rival outlawed paramilitary groups, which are supposed to be observing cease-fires.