Summary Party colleagues and the Northern Ireland government confirmed his death but didn't specify a cause
BELFAST, Northern Ireland: (AP) - Jim Molyneaux, a quiet but canny politician who led the Ulster Unionist Party through some of Northern Ireland s bloodiest years and the early period of peacemaking, has died at the age of 94.
Party colleagues and the Northern Ireland government confirmed his death Monday, but didn t specify a cause.
Throughout his 1979-1995 leadership, Molyneaux kept the Ulster Unionists as Northern Ireland s largest party and main representative of its British Protestant majority, despite strong competition from Ian Paisley s hard-line Democratic Unionists.
Molyneaux favored integrating Northern Ireland with the rest of the United Kingdom and opposed key goals of 1990s peacemaking, particularly the creation of a local Northern Ireland government and the central role given to Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party linked to the outlawed Irish Republican Army.
