CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt and Sudan on Saturday rejected an Ethiopian proposal to share information on the activities of its giant hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile after negotiations between the three countries in Kinshasa ended this week without progress.
Ethiopia is pinning its hopes on economic development and power generation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt fears will hurt the supply of the Nile. Sudan is also concerned about the impact on its own water flow.
“Ethiopia invites Sudan and Egypt to nominate dam operators for the exchange of data before filling in GERD in the coming rainy seasons,” the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry wrote in a tweet on Saturday.
But Cairo and Khartoum have insisted they are seeking a legally binding agreement on the dam’s operations, which according to Addis Ababa is crucial to its economic development.
“Sudan believes that the exchange of information is a necessary procedure, but that the Ethiopian offer to do so in the manner indicated in their letter implies a suspicious selectivity in the handling of the agreement,” the Sudanese Irrigation Ministry said on Saturday.
After the Kinshasa meeting, Ethiopia stressed that the second year filling of the dam reservoir will be carried out according to schedule.
Sudan will hold 600 million cubic meters (785 million cubic meters) of water in its Jebel Awliya reservoir to ‘ensure the continued operation of the pumping stations on the White Nile and the Nile River to meet the agricultural and drinking water needs’ in preparation for Ethiopia fills second, Sudanese state news agency SUNA reported on Saturday.
The Egyptian Minister of Irrigation told a local television program on Saturday that although reserves at the Aswan High Dam could help prevent the effects of a second fill, the drought management is particularly concerned.
Sudan and Egypt have proposed the inclusion of the European Union, the United States and the United Nations as mediators, in addition to the ongoing facilitation of talks in the African Union. Both countries said Ethiopia had rejected the proposal at the Kinshasa meeting.
Reporting by Nadine Awadalla; edited by Jonathan Oatis