The Rev Ian Paisley is to quit as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

 STORMONT, NORTHERN IRELAND (MAY 8, 2007) (ITN) -  Ian Paisley will step down as Northern Ireland's first minister in May, just a year after he set aside decades of hatred and helped secure political stability by agreeing to share power with Catholic foes.

Martin McGuinness, the British province's deputy first minister and a senior member of the predominantly Catholic Sinn Fein party, described Paisley's departure as the end of an era.

McGuinness told Irish radio last year's deal between Irish nationalist Sinn Fein and Paisley's pro-British Democratic Unionist Party had been "one of the most historic political breakthroughs in the history of the island of Ireland."

Paisley's son, Ian Paisley Jr, resigned as a junior minister in the Northern Ireland power-sharing government last month, bowing to criticism of his links to a property developer.

The Good Friday Agreement reached in 1998 largely ended 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland that killed more than 3,600 people, but tension persists in some parts of the province between the Protestant majority and the minority Catholics.

Paisley facts

* Born in 1926 in Armagh, the son of a dissident Baptist minister, he delivered his first sermon aged 16 and founded his own breakaway Free Presbyterian Church in 1951. Critical of the Catholic Church, Paisley once called the Pope "the Anti-Christ"

* Emerged as a political force in the 1960s, leading protests over issues such as the flying of Irish flags in Belfast. In 1971 he founded the Democratic Unionist Party which became the province's biggest political party in 2005.

* His defence of Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom -- encapsulated in the war cry "No Surrender" -- and his hostility toward the Catholic Church made him a hero to many Protestants but a rabble-rousing bigot to many Catholics.

* First elected to the British parliament in 1970 and to the European parliament in 1979, he was viewed as a spent force after opposing a 1998 peace deal but his uncompromising stance later won him support from disillusioned Protestants.

* Paisley became First Minister in May 2007 after a deal to share power with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein. He and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness -- a former IRA commander -- have been dubbed "the chuckle brothers" following a string of unexpectedly jovial joint appearances.