Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has officially taken office as Egypt’s new president at a ceremony at the Ittihadiya presidential palace.

Sisi, who was Egypt’s former military chief, signed a transfer of power agreement with the outgoing interim president Adly Mansour on Sunday.

Sisi said Cairo rejects terrorism and violence and added that he regards being the president of Egypt as a big honor and responsibility.

“The time has come to build a more stable future,” he noted in a speech at the presidential palace in Cairo's district of Heliopolis.
The ceremony at the palace was attended by at least 45 Arab and international figures, according to Egyptian media reports.

Kings of Jordan and Bahrain, the emir of Kuwait and the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates were among the guests.

Reports also said that the ceremony at Ittihadiya is scheduled to be followed by another ceremony at the Koubbeh palace.

Earlier in the day, Sisi was sworn in as the new president at Cairo's Constitutional Court amid tight security as security forces have been deployed across the capital in anticipation of mass demonstrations by the supporters of ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and the Muslim Brotherhood movement as well as possible militant attacks.

On June 3, Sisi was officially declared president after Egypt’s electoral commission said that he had won 96.91 percent of the ballots.

The election came nearly one year after Sisi led the ouster of Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president, in July 2013.

Sisi’s presidency places Egypt back in the hands of a top military official just three years after a popular uprising against Mubarak, an air force officer who ruled the North African country for nearly three decades.