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FILE – Great Renaissance Dam of Ethiopia (GERD) – Reuters
CAIRO – January 3, 2021: Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez told Youm7 that Minister Sameh Shokry and Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Abdel Aty will participate in the new round of negotiations on the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) which takes place on Sunday afternoon.
The Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported that the Sudanese Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Yasser Abbas, and the Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Omar Qamar al-Din, will participate in the ministerial meeting to be held on January 3.
The meeting is chaired by the South African Minister for International Cooperation, as South Africa is currently the president of the African Union (AU) mediating the negotiations.
Regarding the content of the meeting, it will focus on Sudan’s proposal to make the negotiations more effective by expanding the role of the AU through its experts. The goal is to reach a binding legal agreement. It is noted that the AU experts have already drawn up one that should be satisfactory to all three states.
The AU convened Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan for a meeting on January 3 to discuss the issue of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
The meeting is the first after talks have been suspended for a month and takes place as South Africa concludes its presidency of the union.
In a phone call on Saturday, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and his South African counterpart and African Union (AU) president Cyril Ramaphosa discussed the tripartite talks on the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
President Sisi reaffirmed the foundations of the Egyptian position that orders the crystallization of a binding legal agreement between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt on the rules of operation of dams and filling of reservoirs.
The president stressed that Nile water is an existential problem for Egypt and its people and expressed his appreciation for the efforts made by President Ramaphosa.
For his part, the AU president praised Egypt’s efforts to reach solutions to the disagreement, stating that coordination between the two countries continues over the next period to conclude a fair and balanced agreement.
The call also covered aspects of bilateral cooperation and ways of serving other African states both at the AU level and internationally.
After withdrawing from the tripartite negotiations on the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in November, Sudan declared that it agreed with Ethiopia in resuming talks and activating the Joint High Committee on Border Affairs.
That was after a visit by Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, accompanied by Foreign Minister Omar Kamar El Din and head of the General Intelligence Agency, to Addis Ababa on Sunday. The visit was scheduled to last two days, but Hamdok returned to Khartoum after a few hours without clarifying the reasons.
The dispute between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia dates back to May 2011, when Ethiopia started building the dam; Egypt expressed concern about its involvement in the water [55.5 billion cubic meters].
Three years later, a series of tripartite talks between the two countries together with Sudan began to reach an agreement, while Ethiopia continued with the construction of the dam.
In 2015, the three countries signed the Declaration of Principles, according to which downstream countries should not be adversely affected by the construction of the dam.
In October 2019, Egypt blamed Addis Ababa for hindering a final agreement on a technical problem, and called for the activation of article 10 of the Declaration of Principles, which stipulates that if the three countries cannot find a solution to these disputes, they must ask for mediation.
Washington had negotiated tripartite negotiations between the three countries, in the presence of the president of the World Bank (WB) from November 6, 2019 until February 27 and 28, 2020.
During these rounds of talks, the three parties agreed on tangible results on the rules and operating mechanism of the dam and the process of filling the reservoir during drought and prolonged drought; however, no agreement was reached.
Construction on the Grand Renaissance Dam began on April 2, 2011 at a cost of $ 4.8 billion. It was built by the Italian construction and engineering company Salini Impergilo. The Italian company is based in Milan. The dam is located on the Blue Nile with a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters and is expected to generate up to 6,000 megawatts of energy.
