Al Sisi,Putin signed Aldabba nuclear agreement and exchanged addresses at a press conference

Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin attended a ceremony of signing an agreement on Monday in Cairo officially launching work on Egypt’s first-ever nuclear power plant at Dabaa on the north coast.

Egypt’s Minister of Electricity Mohamed Shaker and the Russian Rosatom Director General Alexi Likhatchev signed the document to officially start the project.

According to the initial Dabaa agreement signed by the two countries in 2015, Russia would build four reactors, each producing 1,200 megawatts of electricity, making a total output of 4,800 megawatts.

After the signing ceremony, El-Sisi and Putin announced in two addresses the results of their talks on bilateral economic, military and political relations; the war against terrorism; the resumption of Russian flights to Egypt; as well as regional crisis including Palestine, Libya and Syria at the presidential palace in Cairo on Monday afternoon.

The two men stressed their cooperation in combating terrorism, settle the Palestine cause and strengthen their economic cooperation in various fields..

The two leaders held talks at the palace in Heliopolis shortly after Putin arrived in Cairo earlier this afternoon to start his second official visit to the country.

The first reactor in Dabaa project is expected to begin operations in 2024, with the entire project to be completed within 12 years.

Earlier on Monday afternoon, El-Sisi received Putin at Cairo International Airport at the start of the Russian leader’s second official visit to Egypt.