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Negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the filling and operation of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) began on Sunday for a week in order to establish a time frame and framework to renew the talks.
The irrigation ministries of the three countries are attending the talks in Sudan under the auspices of the African Union (AU). At the end of the week, the parties are supposed to present a report to the AU on ways to make tangible progress in negotiations that have been stalled since August.
“Unless there is a clear deadline to reach an agreement, there is no point in resuming negotiations. The parties will simply allow Addis Ababa to procrastinate and waste time, “said a diplomat on condition of anonymity.
This week’s round will be decisive, according to Mohamed Hegazi, a former deputy for Egypt’s foreign minister. “We are between two periods of Nile flooding. During the first flood, Ethiopia filled the dam’s reservoir with 4.9 billion cubic meters of water. We definitely cannot allow Addis Ababa to continue to fill the tank next summer, ”he said.
Sudan has repeatedly voiced its rejection of another round of negotiations using the same approach that led to a stalemate in August. But a statement from Sudan’s Ministry of Water Resources last week noted that a clear and detailed agenda would be agreed at this week’s meeting, along with a specific timetable for negotiations and a clear list of results to be achieved with the aid. of observers.
“Sudan has stated that the results to be achieved in this round are different from those of the previous rounds. Judging by the previous rounds and Ethiopia’s intransigence in reaching a binding agreement, we cannot place much hope in further rounds. But we will have to wait and see, ”said the diplomat.
Sudan will try to get the parties to agree to allow the experts attending the talks to play a more important and effective role. These talks are sponsored by South Africa and attended by observers from the United States, the European Union and the AU.
Establishing strict lines for talks is imperative, Hegazi said. Experts should play a more active role in conciliating the demands of different parties on controversial issues. And it should be clearly mentioned that an agreement must be reached soon.
“We accepted the first filling operation, although it was a unilateral act that contradicted previous agreements. But we can’t wait until next summer or allow Ethiopia to start the second stage of filling the reservoir, ”he explained.
The resumption of negotiations was partly due to comments by US President Donald Trump last month, in which he blamed Ethiopia for the failure of the negotiations and described Cairo’s concerns in the dispute as legitimate.
In a call with Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, while announcing that Sudan and Israel would normalize relations, Trump told reporters last month that the dam dispute was a “dangerous situation because Egypt will not be able to live that way. , and they “I’ll wind up blowing up the dam.”
He added that Washington had stopped providing aid to Ethiopia as a result of its actions.
Addis Ababa reacted angrily to Trump’s comments, describing them as “incitement to war.”
Trump’s comments had served to show which party was preventing a deal, Hegazi said. “They shed light on the danger of the current regional situation and show that it is a threat to international peace and security. Furthermore, the fact that the UN Security Council has referred the issue to the AU does not mean that we cannot refer it back to the Security Council and take further escalation measures if the negotiations fail, “he said.
A few days after Trump’s remarks, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and the Chairman of the Sovereign Council of Sudan, Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, highlighted their countries’ adherence to a binding agreement on the filling and operation of The prey.
“The meeting saw discussions on GERD, with a consensus reached on the water issue facing both countries, regarding it as a national security issue,” Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said after a meeting of the two leaders. in Cairo last month.
Egypt stated that it was willing to restart negotiations because it was the only way to reach an agreement and solve the GERD problem. However, he reiterated his firm stance.
Mohamed Abdel-Ati, Egypt’s minister of irrigation and water resources, said that whatever the agenda of the negotiations, Cairo will not compromise on its demand for a legally binding agreement specifying the details of the filling and operations of the GERD, especially during periods of drought and severe drought.
Ethiopia has not opposed the resumption of the talks and has expressed its willingness to resume the talks after they failed in August. He then declared that September 14 could be a possible date to resume talks, but Khartoum was not willing to resume the talks that had been circling without approaching an agreement.
The first filling of the controversial dam took place this summer, despite the fact that no binding agreement was reached. The move angered Egypt and Sudan, who saw it as a violation of the Declaration of Principles (DoP) signed in Sudan in March 2015 that states that the three countries must first agree on the guidelines and rules on the operational process of GERD before to fill the tank.
The latest round of negotiations held in August ended with the lack of a unified draft agreement that includes each of the country’s proposals.
It was carried out on the basis of the results of an African mini-summit led by the water ministers of the three countries to discuss the achievement of an agreement. During the summit, held in July, the leaders agree to hold tripartite talks sponsored by the AU that will be monitored by the United States and the EU.
Washington had negotiated a tripartite discussion between the three countries, in the presence of the President of the World Bank from November last year until February 27-28, when Ethiopia abstained from attending the last session of the negotiations that was supposed to see the signing of an agreement.
* A version of this article appears in print in the November 5, 2020 issue of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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