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Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation announced that Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have agreed that each country will present its views during a meeting between irrigation ministers on Wednesday.
This agenda emerged as a result of the tripartite meetings of the committee of legal and technical experts, which concluded on Tuesday.
The committee discussed the negotiation methodology for two days during the next talks, as well as the proposals presented by the three countries regarding the conflict.
The current round of tripartite negotiations was convened by South Africa, which chaired the current session of the African Union.
Egypt has emphasized the need to reach a binding legal agreement on the filling and operation of the GERD in a way that achieves the common interests of the three countries and ensures their interests in water.
Sources familiar with the Nile water dispute said the current negotiations face a number of obstacles.
First, there is the impossibility of agreeing on how the three countries will resolve the disputes, as stipulated in the Declaration of Principles signed between heads of state in 2015.
The absence of a robust, fast and compatible mechanism for conflict resolution between the parties can lead to significant technical and communication problems.
The sources clarified that Addis Ababa seeks to reach a non-binding agreement that allows the heads of each state to use a more flexible framework to solve problems as they arise.
Egypt and Sudan, on the other hand, are committed to creating a binding agreement in accordance with the rules of international law and the opinions of experts from the World Bank, the African Union and the United States.
Egypt wants to include a clause in the agreement that allows controversial issues to be dealt with by a third party, while Ethiopia believes that third parties should only be able to provide guidance.
According to the sources, Ethiopia is stalling to avoid reaching a binding agreement that may restrict its ambitions to build more dams, either on the Nile or on the Atbara and Sobat rivers, which are two rivers that link Ethiopia with other countries.
Edited translation by Al-Masry Al-Youm
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