Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor,will become the first leader of his country to commemorate D-Day when he joins other world leaders - including Jacques Chirac, the French President, President George Bush and the Queen - on the Normandy beaches for the 60th anniversary of the allied landings on 6 June.

Mr Schröder accepted the the invitation, confirmed by Paris yesterday, with "great joy", said Thomas Steg, a spokesman for the Chancellor. Mr Steg said that inviting the "enemy of the period" and the victorious powers was a "historic gesture" to show that "times have changed".

Helmut Kohl, the previous German chancellor, was not invited in June 1994 to the 50th anniversary of the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, causing controversy in the German press and complaints in the German parliament. Mr Kohl announced later that he had not wanted to attend.

Mr Schröder's invitation, issued personally by M. Chirac when the two men met last month, is also a symbol of the rekindled political friendship between France and Germany after a number of rocky years. First reactions from veterans of the French resistance and General Charles de Gaulle's Free France movement were positive. Jacques Pigneaux de Laroche, treasurer of the Free France foundation, said: "I am very pleased with the news ... You can't eternally relive the war and all its miseries."

Serge Borochovitch, a Free France veteran, said: "Should we forever blame Germany for what the Nazis did? The Nazis were one thing, modern Germany is another."