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The meeting on Friday, held as part of talks negotiated by the African Union (AU), was attended by the irrigation ministers of the three countries, as well as observers and experts from the AU, the United States, the EU Commission and the UA Commission.
The technical and legal committees of the three countries were scheduled to produce a unified draft of a collective report of the proposals of the three capitals that will be presented on Friday to the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, current president of the AU.
“The draft did not live up to its submission to the AU Office due to ongoing dispute over many legal and technical points,” the Egyptian statement read.
After a lengthy discussion on future negotiations, the irrigation ministers agreed that each country will send a letter to the AU president expressing their vision for the next stage of the talks, the statement added.
Sudan’s Irrigation Ministry said in a separate statement on Friday “after carefully evaluating the progress of the negotiations and reviewing the work of experts in recent days, it has become clear that the merger of the three proposals has stalled.”
“Continuing the talks in their current form will not achieve practical results,” Sudan’s irrigation minister Yasser Abbas was quoted as saying in the Khartoum statement.
Abbas reiterated that reaching an agreement “requires political will.”
On Monday, the three legal and technical committees met to negotiate the draft proposals compiled by the three parties on August 21. They were scheduled to work on the compiled report through August 28 with the aim of reconciling views on points of contention to reach a binding agreement.
“The three countries agreed to conclude the current round of negotiations without reaching an agreement on the draft integrated agreement that was scheduled to be presented to the president of the AU on August 28,” the Sudanese statement read.
Sudan said that negotiations are the only way to reach an agreement and that “it will be ready to resume negotiations at any time after communicating with the AU presidency.”
Egypt and Sudan have been in talks with Ethiopia for years to reach a legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of the massive hydroelectric dam that Addis Ababa is building on the Blue Nile.
The concluded round of AU-sponsored talks between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia was launched last month. There was a pause between July 27 and August 3 after Ethiopia announced that it had completed the first phase of filling the GERD reservoir. The talks were further halted when Sudan called for the meetings to be suspended to allow consultations after Addis Ababa proposed a package of non-binding guidelines for the filling and operation of the mega dam.
Downstream countries Egypt and Sudan are seeking a legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of the dam.
The $ 4.8 billion hydroelectric project, built 15 kilometers from Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, has been the subject of controversy among the three countries. Cairo fears that the project will significantly reduce the Nile river’s water supply, while Sudan fears that it could jeopardize the safety of its own dams.
Ethiopia, on the other hand, says the project is key to its development and hopes to become Africa’s largest electricity exporter with the GERD, which will become the largest dam on the continent.
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