David Trimble, Northern Ireland’s Nobel peacemaker, dead at 77
- David Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement
- Trimble was elected first minister in Northern Ireland’s first power-sharing government that year
David Trimble, the Northern Irish leader who steered the region’s Protestant majority into an historic peace deal with their Catholic rivals that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, has died aged 77, his family said on Monday.
Trimble, who became Northern Irish first minister in the power-sharing government that emerged from the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, was one of the chief architects of the accord that mostly ended three decades of bloodshed in the region.
His family said he passed away peacefully following a short illness.
“Time after time during the negotiations he made the hard choices over the politically expedient ones because he believed future generations deserved to grow up free from violence and hatred,” former US president Bill Clinton said in a statement, describing Trimble as a leader of courage, vision and principle.
Trimble and Irish nationalist John Hume jointly received the Nobel prize in 1998 for their roles in helping end the violence between Catholic nationalists seeking Irish unity and pro-British Protestants wishing to stay in the United Kingdom that claimed some 3,600 lives.
Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin said Trimble’s regard in his Nobel speech for the “politicians of the possible” summed up the Northern Irishman’s achievements over many decades, often in challenging circumstances that culminated in the “crucial and courageous role” he played in the peace negotiations.