The Government is to contribute £150,000 towards the purchase of a Peace Park and the construction of a Round Tower in Messines Ridge, West Flanders, to commemorate the 50,000 Irishmen from both sides of the Border who died in the first World War in the 300-mile battlefield in France and Belgium.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said yesterday this would would serve as "a powerful symbol of reconciliation".
The project is being carried out by the organisation, A Journey of Reconciliation, whose joint executive chairmen are former Fine Gael Donegal TD, Mr Paddy Harte, and Mr Glen Barr, former senior political spokesman of the Ulster Defence Association.
Mr Ahern said: "I thought it was an excellent idea and I was glad to recommend it to the Government for financial support." He wanted to commend the people who had undertaken the project.
Today both patrons and trustees of the Journey of Reconciliation will travel to Messines to meet the Burgomeister, Mr Jean Liefooghe, and an inter-denominational ceremony will take place which will celebrate the "turning of the sod" on the proposed site of the war memorial.
As a memorial, it will recognise the savagery of war, and the futility and the inhuman scale of the killing.
It will also become a place where both communities can join together in remembrance. Its construction will involve young Protestants and Catholics from north and south. In addition, voluntary contributions and assistance from the business community on both sides of the Border will be vital to the project.
The design of the Peace Park and the Round Tower symbolises the ideas and features representative of the entire island of Ireland. Four areas characteristic of the provinces will be treated in landscape terms.
The Round Tower was chosen as it predates the Reformation and political divisions in Ireland. No one political or religious party can lay claim over it. The symbol of ancient Ireland, Newgrange, is replicated in the design so the position of the sun will shine down the site axis and enter an opening in the Tower at 11 a.m. on November 11th, which was the exact hour and date of the Armistice in 1918.