Sudanese Minister of Water Resources and Electricity Moataz Moussa announced the postponement of the tripartite meeting with his Egyptian and Ethiopian counterparts on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Moussa said the postponement came upon Egypt’s request, because the scheduled date was not convenient to the foreign ministers; an exact date has not been decided yet. Egypt wanted to merge this meeting with a separate one that brings together the foreign ministers of the same countries.
The meeting is expected to be held in the presence of the French and Dutch consultancy firms to reconcile their convergent views with regards to the mechanisms of implementation the required studies. The three countries are set to discuss contingency plans in the absence of agreement between the firms, which would include choosing new ones and restarting the selection process.
The three countries previously formed a committee to select a consultancy firm to assess the impact of the GERD on Sudan’s and Egypt’s water supply.
During the ninth round of negotiations held in Cairo earlier this month, Egypt officially handed Ethiopia a list of its observations on the dam, focused mainly on the acceleration of the dam construction while slowing down negotiations, which would not allow for the implementation of the recommendations of the consultancy firms.
The dam is being built on the Blue Nile, about 20 km from the Sudanese border, and has a storage capacity of 74bn cubic metres and the potential to generate 6,000 MW of electricity. Egypt fears the construction of the $4.3bn dam will negatively affect its water share that is considered to be a great source of water to millions people of the desert nation.
Expert on Sudan and the Nile Basin at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies Hani Raslan told Daily News Egypt that postponing the tripartite meeting had no clear justification, noting that Moussa’s statement was very indirect.
Raslan added that the justification made by Moussa was not convincing, and Egypt wanted to hold this meeting as it had no intentions to postpone it.
