Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, a key backer of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord who shared the Nobel Peace Prize that year, has announced he will resign as party chief after losing a decade-long battle to steer Protestants toward compromise.
Trimble's decision to quit followed the Ulster Unionists' worst-ever performance in British parliamentary elections on Thursday. The party that once dominated politics in this predominantly Protestant territory retained just one of Northern Ireland's 18 seats and the highest-profile loser was Trimble himself.
In a statement on Saturday issued by Ulster Unionist headquarters in Belfast, the 60-year-old Trimble said he told senior party colleagues "I do not wish to continue as leader".
The Ulster Unionists declined to explain when Trimble's resignation would take effect, nor when the battered party's grassroots council would convene to elect a successor. Trimble's most likely successors also suffered their own defeats on Thursday versus the hardline Democratic Unionist Party, which has mobilised growing Protestant hostility to the 1998 accord and Trimble's long-pivotal support for it.