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Mongolia signed a long-awaited deal with Rio Tinto and Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines on Tuesday to develop a $4 billion gold and copper mine after a heated national debate over how to exploit the country’s mineral wealth.

The agreement on the Oyu Tolgoi mine in the Gobi desert was renegotiated repeatedly after opponents complained it shortchanged Mongolia. Parliament had to repeal a windfall profits tax in August before London-based Rio Tinto Ltd. and Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. would agree to go ahead.

Mongolia will own 34 percent of the mine and receive a $250 million advance payment against royalties and taxes under the agreement signed by its ministers for finance, mining and the environment and executives of Rio and Ivanhoe. It calls for total investment of $4 billion.

“It’s been a long road,” said Peter Meredith, Ivanhoe’s chairman of the board, at a signing ceremony. “These agreements are designed to benefit all Mongolian people.”

Meredith said the foreign partners would be barred from selling their stakes to sovereign wealth funds or other investors. That is intended to reassure Mongolians who worry about economic domination by neighboring China and feared that a Chinese government fund might try to buy into the project.

The first ore is expected to be shipped in 2013, according to Bayarsaikhan Tsevelmaa, chairman of a parliament committee on economic issues.

Negotiations over Oyu Tolgoi began in 2001 but proceeded fitfully. The talks were a test of Mongolia’s willingness to welcome foreign investment and pursue commercial ties with Japan, the United States and others to offset its economic dependence on neighbors China and Russia.

Legislators had balked at the complexity of the proposed agreement and provisions that would cap Mongolia’s stake in the mine at 34 percent while exempting the foreign miners from a windfall-profits tax.

Parliament told the government in July to renegotiate the deal after lawmakers rejected an agreement reached in March. Opponents complained the deal shortchanged the country and said the government should own at least 51 percent of the mine.

Under the latest version, the government can buy shares to raise its stake to 50 percent after 30 years once the miners recoup their initial investment.

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