First Minister of Northern Ireland; Nobel Peace Prize
Trimble at first opposed the appointment of former U.S. Senator George J. Mitchell as the chairman of multi-party talks, but eventually accepted him. The talks resulted in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement (GFA) of April 1998. Trimble was subsequently seen as instrumental in getting his party to accept the accord. He backed the agreement despite opposition from more than half his parliamentary colleagues, which won him overwhelming support from London, Dublin, and Washington. In a referendum, over 70% of the Northern Ireland electorate endorsed the agreement, and he later won support for his approach from his party’s ruling body.
Trimble was elected on 25 June 1998 as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Upper Bann. On 1 July 1998 he was elected First Minister of Northern Ireland in the New Northern Ireland Assembly.
In October 1998, Trimble and John Hume were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland. The Nobel Institute noted:
As the leader of the traditionally predominant party in Northern Ireland, David Trimble showed great political courage when, at a critical stage of the process, he advocated solutions which led to the peace agreement.
Arguments over the extent of Provisional Irish Republican Army decommissioning led to repeated disruptions during Trimble's tenure as First Minister. In particular:
- The office of First Minister was suspended from 11 February 2000 to 30 May 2000.
- Trimble resigned as First Minister on 1 July 2001 due to the continuing impasse with regard to the IRA refusing his demands that it decommission its arms, as per the commitments all parties had signed up to in section 7 pt. 3 (page 25) of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement but he was re-elected on 5 November 2001.
- The Assembly was suspended from 14 October 2002 until 2007 due to accusations of an IRA spy ring being operated there (the so-called Stormontgate Affair).
In 1998, Tony Blair announced a new judicial inquiry, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, into the killing of 14 unarmed civil rights marchers in Derry in 1972. A previous investigation, the Widgery Tribunal, into the same event had been discredited. During the debate in the House of Commons, Trimble was one of few dissenting voices. He said "I am sorry to have to say to the Prime Minister that I think that the hope expressed by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) that this will be part of the healing process is likely to be misplaced. Opening old wounds like this is likely to do more harm than good. The basic facts of the situation are known and not open to dispute." Reporting in 2010, The Saville Inquiry confirmed that all of the 14 killings and 13 woundings were unjustified.
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