Dhaka, May 22 (IANS) Bangladesh has signed a framework agreement for Russian cooperation for the country’s maiden nuclear plant that it hopes will be installed by 2017 and generate 2,000 MGW power by 2020.

The pact signed in Moscow Friday is the culmination of Dhaka’s quest for a nuclear power plant that began in 1961, when it was East Pakistan, the New Age newspaper said.

The plant will be set up at Rooppur in Pabna district in the northern region and is estimated to cost $1.5 billion.

The foreign office announced here that the framework agreement on cooperation in the field of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes was signed with Sergey Kirienko, director general of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation or ‘Rosatom’.

Foreign Minister Dipu Moni, on a visit to Moscow, witnessed the signing of the agreement.