LONDON: Northern Ireland will inaugurate on Tuesday the historic power-sharing government it hopes will finally lock in peace in the province and bury decades of sectarian bloodshed and terrorism.

The Northern Ireland Assembly, where Protestants and Catholics will share power, is to be revived after four-and-a-half years when the peace process at times seemed in limbo.

Firebrand Protestant preacher Ian Paisley is to become the province's first minister, with Catholic convicted terrorist Martin McGuinness as his deputy -- a deal which would have been utterly unthinkable even five years ago. That the two sides have been able to come together in government is an extraordinary triumph for years of painstaking progress -- and a triumph the outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be keen to claim as his own.

He and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern were to be present at Tuesday's ceremony inaugurating the new administration at Stormont, with Blair, expected to announce his resignation plans later in the week, hoping to bow out on a high.

Blair wants lasting peace in Northern Ireland to be the cornerstone of his legacy, rather than the unpopular war in Iraq. Meanwhile Ahern -- who faces a tough May 24 general election -- could also do with a dose of reflected glory.—AFP