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UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (Xinhua) – The United Nations stands ready to facilitate an agreement between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan on a Nile dam, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, said the world body received a letter from Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok on the matter.
“We reiterate our readiness to support all efforts to reach an agreement on the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam,” he told a daily press conference. “Mr. Guterres welcomes initiatives to move the negotiations forward and awaits agreement from all parties on how the UN can better support the process.”
Before any UN compromise, all parties involved in the dispute must agree on mediation, he said.
Ethiopia, an upstream Nile basin country, began building the dam in 2011, while Egypt is concerned that the dam could affect its annual share of the Nile waters. Sudan has recently raised similar concerns. In recent years, tripartite talks on the rules for filling and operating the dam with a total capacity of 74 billion cubic meters, have been unsuccessful. Final product
