The Nobel peace prize winner John Hume bowed out as leader of the SDLP this weekend.

The Foyle MP officially stepped down at his party's annual conference in County Down on Sunday when the deputy first minister Mark Durkan will take over.

"I think the time has come. I have had serious health problems recently as everybody knows. I had to cut down on my workload. But it is also time for a new generation now that we have laid the foundations for a new beginning in Northern Ireland and, of course, I have every confidence in the new leader's ability since I know Mark very well and we have worked so closely for so many years," said Hume.

Hume, who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble for their efforts that brought the Good Friday Agreement, said the reinstatement of Trimble was not the end of the province's problems.

''Now that we have laid the foundations for real politics with the institutions in place, the real solutions will start to our problems. Real politics will be the social and economic growth of our community," he said.

On IRA decommissioning, Hume said it was a clear signal from the terrorists of a commitment to a peaceful future and called on the loyalist paramilitaries to follow suit.

"I am very confident that we are in a new beginning and as the IRA themselves have made clear they are totally committed to the peace process. I would like to see other paramilitaries following their example by decommissioning completely and, of course, as far as the dissident republicans in the Real IRA are concerned, I would like to ask them directly: `What is it that is motivating your campaign?'" he said.

He attacked the scenes of fighting that followed the vote that elected David Trimble and Mark Durkan as first and deputy first minister on Tuesday."I think that particular event sent a very bad image out to the world and those people who engaged in that should remember those television images flashed across the world. Images like that damage Northern Ireland and undermine our efforts to get inward investment."I find it very difficult to understand the opposition of those people because given that the primary principle of unionism has always been the principle of consent and given that all of nationalist Ireland now accepts that principle, if they overthrow the Agreement, they will be overthrowing that fundamental principle of unionism. They are the people who will destroy unionism if they do that," said Hume.

Hume has vowed to remain an MP and MEP, despite the health problems that have forced him to stand down, and continuing to work for his constituents.

"I'm looking forward to continuing my work particularly at a European and an international level and I hope I will be doing that for many years to come. As an MP there is still work to do. I still want to continue the work we have done to develop Londonderry economically, socially and culturally. When I became MP, unemployment was 30 per cent. It is now nine per cent which is still too high and I will be working to continue to reduce that," he said.