Hume Resigns From N. Irish Assembly

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — John Hume, a Nobel peace laureate and Northern Ireland’s senior Roman Catholic statesman, resigned Monday from the province’s cross-community legislature, citing his overload of work and shaky health.

Hume, 63, said several months ago that he planned to step down as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, a central institution forged under terms of the province’s 1998 peace accord.

He was a key intellectual inspiration for that pact, which proposed a joint Catholic-Protestant government in Northern Ireland that cooperated formally with the neighboring Irish Republic.

Before entering the Assembly, Hume already had much on his plate as a veteran member of the British and European parliaments and as leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party.