Peacemaker John Hume to Resign as Party Chief

John Hume, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the intellectual architect of the peace process in Northern Ireland, announced that he will resign as leader of the British province’s major Roman Catholic party, which he co-founded in 1970.

Hume, 64, said he will surrender the helm of the Social Democratic and Labor Party--which holds the most Catholic posts in Northern Ireland’s foundering unity government--at the party conference in November. He cited ill health as the only reason he was leaving with key parts of the 3-year-old Good Friday peace accord still in doubt.

But analysts pointed to his party’s growing challenge from Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party that Hume labored to involve in peacemaking efforts. In June elections, Sinn Fein outpolled the moderate SDLP among Catholic voters for the first time.