DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) – The leaders of both parts of Ireland, long divided by politics and religion, united Friday on the grassy slopes of the island’s most symbolic, divisive battle in history – and pledged to make the site a center for mutual cooperation and respect.

Celebrating their recent breakthrough in relations, Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley traveled south to the site of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne for a major ceremony of reconciliation with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.

Mr. Paisley, who earlier this week launched a power-sharing government with leaders of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, said he wanted people to learn to appreciate both sides’ competing versions of history.

“It would be a good thing for (Irish) nationalists to know orange history, and for (British) unionists to know green history,” Mr. Paisley said on the site where “orange” became synonymous with Ireland’s pro-British Protestants.

On July 12, 1690, the forces of Protestant King William of Orange forded the Boyne to outflank and defeat the army of James II, the Catholic king he had deposed from the English throne. The major Protestant fraternal group in Northern Ireland, the Orange Order, stages mass parades each July 12 to celebrate the date when they achieved “ascendancy” in Ireland, an event that many Catholics deplore.

But on Friday, Mr. Ahern played host to Mr. Paisley and dozens of officials from the Orange Order. He showed off the Irish government’s $20 million project to turn the Boyne battlefield into a major historical and tourist venue.

“As we work to build a shared future, we are all coming to acknowledge that we have a shared and complex past. It is important for us all that we acknowledge and celebrate that history in all its complexity,” Mr. Ahern said with Mr. Paisley beside him.

Instead of reverberating with “cannon fire, the shot of musket, or the clash of sword steel, today we have tranquility in which we can contemplate the past and look forward to the future,” said Paisley, who presented Ahern with musket more than 300 years old that was captured by William’s forces on the Boyne.

Until recent years, Mr. Paisley refused to talk directly to Ahern’s government and insisted it should have no role in Northern Ireland.

But Mr. Paisley’s position has been rapidly evolving ever since his Democratic Unionist Party became the largest in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2003, the outlawed Irish Republican Army disarmed and renounced violence in 2005, and Sinn Fein agreed in January to begin cooperating with the Northern Ireland police.

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On the Net:

Irish government’s Battle of the Boyne site, http://www.battleoftheboyne.ie/