CAIRO, Apr 14 (NNN-MENA) – Egyptian Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, yesterday held a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, to discuss the latest developments of the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), built on the Nile River.
Shoukry explained how Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to carry out the second filling of the GERD, without reaching a tripartite legally binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan, “would impact the stability and the security of the region,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said, in a statement.
Shoukry previously sent letters to the UN, the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, regarding the dispute over the GERD.
The Egyptian top diplomat highlighted the importance of the role of the UN and its agencies, in contributing to resuming negotiations by Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, in a bid to reach an agreement on the rules of filling and operating the dam.
Ethiopia, an upstream Nile basin country, carried out the first phase of filling the dam in July, 2020, and is planning to go ahead with the second phase in July this year, despite the concerns of Egypt and Sudan, which have repeatedly called for reaching a tripartite agreement.
A week ago, tripartite GERD talks, sponsored by the African Union (AU) in Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo, failed to reach an agreement. Both Egypt and Sudan have blamed Ethiopia for the deadlock.
Ethiopia started building the GERD in 2011, while Egypt is concerned it might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-metre annual share of the Nile water. Sudan has recently been raising similar concern over the dam.
Over the past few years, tripartite talks on the rules of filling and operating the giant hydropower dam, whose total capacity is 74 billion cubic metres, have been fruitless, including those hosted earlier by Washington and the recent ones by the AU.– NNN-MENA
