The agreement between the Flemish government and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) will see the two partners working to restore and maintain war graves in the part of West Flanders known as the Westhoek, where much of the fighting of the First World War took place. The CWGC maintains graves and memorials of more than 1.6 million war dead in 150 countries across the world, nearly 205,000 of them in Belgium.

The new visitor centre will be built near Zonnebeke, a municipality that includes the village of Passendale. The area was in the middle of the Ypres Salient during the First World War, and Zonnebeke was completely destroyed and abandoned until years after the Armistice. Tyne Cot in Passendale is the largest British military cemetery in the world.

The CWGC's new director general, Alan Pateman-Jones, said: "The new visitor centre will create a landmark in the heart of the First World War battlefield region of Flanders. It will provide the public with fascinating insight into the importance of... remembering the fallen of two World Wars."

With the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War approaching, both the CWGC and Flanders region are expecting a huge increase in "war tourism" - the growing numbers of people who visit the sites of the battles and the memorials and cemeteries.

The Zonnebeke centre will also house a headstone-cutting workshop. The CWGC's headstones are currently made in France, but the new centre will provide supplementary capacity to cope with the restorations planned by the CWGC over the next 20 years. Visitors to the centre will be able to see the headstone workshop in action.

According to Westtoer, the West Flanders tourism authority, visitors to the Westhoek area last year numbered 368,000, an increase of 2%, despite the economic crisis affecting tourism in general. Tyne Cot cemetery, with almost 334,000 visitors, was the main destination. In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres drew 207,000 visitors, and the German cemetery in Langemark 146,000.

"First World War tourism in the Westhoek is of major economic importance," said Flemish heritage minister Geert Bourgeois. "These tourists represent an economic input of about €35 million. The commemoration of the centenary of the First World War will be an occasion for the further growth of tourism in the Westhoek."

Last week, acting prime minister Yves Leterme and heritage minister Geert Bourgeois, both native West- Flemings, represented the federal and Flemish governments respectively in the annual remembrance ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres. In Brussels, meanwhile, Prince Filip replaced his father for the first time at the ceremonies there, laying a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Congress Column. The prince later talked to veterans of the Second World War.

Belgium's last surviving veterans of the First World War, former Tour de France cyclist Emile Brichard and émigré to the US Cyriel Barbary, both died in 2004.

www.cwgc.org