Egypt and Ethiopia agreed Thursday 13 July 2023 to finalise a deal over Ethiopia’s controversial mega-dam on the Blue Nile inside 4 months, a breakthrough after years of tensions between the 2 nations.
The huge $4.2-billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been on the centre of a regional dispute ever since Ethiopia broke floor on the venture in 2011, with Egypt fearing it’s going to slash its share of Nile water.
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However in Cairo on Thursday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed “mentioned methods of overcoming the present stalemate in negotiations” over the dam, a joint assertion printed by the Egyptian presidency mentioned.
They agreed “to provoke expedited negotiations to finalise the settlement between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the filling” of the dam and its operation inside 4 months, the assertion mentioned.
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Egypt met Ethiopia on the sidelines
The 2 leaders met on the sidelines of a summit of African leaders from war-torn Sudan’s neighbours in search of to finish the battle that has raged there for almost three months.
Sudan was not concerned within the talks between Sisi and Ahmed, however former insurgent chief Mubarak Ardol — thought of an in depth ally of the Sudanese military — later tweeted his help for the preliminary settlement on the dam.
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Will Sudan be part of?
“Though we’re absent, our full help to this bilateral assertion on GERD, Sudan for positive will be part of quickly to make it a trilateral settlement with out outdoors mediators,” he wrote.
Protracted negotiations over the filling and operation of the dam since 2011 have didn’t result in an settlement between Ethiopia and its downstream neighbours.
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Egypt has lengthy considered the dam as an existential menace, because it depends on the Nile for 97 per cent of its water wants. The dam is nonetheless central to Ethiopia’s growth plans, and in February 2022, Addis Ababa introduced that it had begun producing hydroelectric power for the primary time.
bam/jsa/srm© Agence France-Presse
