David Trimble, a former Northern Ireland first minister who won the Nobel Peace Prize for playing a key role in helping end Northern Ireland's decades of violence, has died, the Ulster Unionist Party said Monday. He was 77.
The party said in a statement on behalf of the Trimble family that the unionist politician died earlier Monday "following a short illness."
The UUP was Northern Ireland's largest Protestant unionist party when, led by Trimble, it agreed to the Good Friday peace accord. Trimble shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with Catholic moderate leader John Hume, head of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, for their work. Trimble struggled to keep his party together as the power-sharing government was rocked by disagreements over disarming the IRA and other paramilitary groups. Senior colleagues defected to the DUP, Trimble lost his seat in Britain's Parliament in 2005 and soon after he resigned as party leader. The following year he was appointed to the upper chamber of Parliament, the House of Lords.
William David Trimble was born in Belfast on Oct. 15, 1944, and was educated at Queen's University, Belfast.
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