A new round of negotiations is expected to take place soon between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which Addis Ababa is constructing at the Nile River and raises Egyptian-Sudanese concerns.
Spokesman of the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed al-Sebai has announced that upon the African Union’s call, a new round of negotiations will be launched in few days.
He denied Egypt’s position being weak after Ethiopia announced completing the first filling of the dam reservoir without prior coordination.
The AU has been sponsoring the trilateral negotiations since early July, in an attempt to reach a final agreement that will end the water conflict, which has been ongoing for almost a decade now.
Previous rounds, in which international observers took part, haven’t resulted in any progress.
However, the AU office held a meeting last week in the presence of the leaders of the three countries and decided to resume negotiations and exclude irrelevant issues and future ambitions in the process.
Cairo accuses Addis Ababa of seeking to waste time in fruitless negotiations to evade any binding agreement.
“It has become clear that Ethiopia is trying to buy more time to enforce fait accompli policies,” said Dr. Hamdi Abdul Rahman, a political science professor at Cairo University.
“It is sometimes using resourcefulness, making false promises or highlighting slogans, such as African solutions to African problems,” he added.
The expert on African affairs, the Egyptian negotiator, demanded that negotiation parties set a time frame in this round of talks, as well as “agree on the reference framework for negotiations so that basic issues such as drought, protracted drought and the mechanism for resolving disputes and future projects on the Blue Nile” are agreed upon.
This would allow the three states to overcome that usual delay, which had earlier canceled Washington agreement.
On Wednesday, Ethiopia celebrated reaching the first-year target for filling the mega-dam.
“It has become evident over the past two weeks in the rainy season that the GERD first year filling is achieved and the dam under construction is already overtopping,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's office said in a statement.
“Egypt will not let go of its water rights,” Sebai stressed, noting that his country “will not respond to provocations and still adheres to its rights”.
