Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry arrived in Addis Ababa on Tuesday to attend the second nine-party meeting on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), being held to resolve disagreements regarding technical reports.
The meeting will be attended by the foreign and irrigation ministers and intelligence chiefs of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia to follow up on the results of the first nine-party meeting, which took place in Khartoum in April and continue discussions over technical reports.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abou Zaid expressed Egypt’s aspirations that the high-level nine-party meeting would be able to implement the instructions of the three countries’ leaders, in order to find solutions to the obstacles hindering the work of the Tripartite National Committee (TNC), and to complete the track of studies as stipulated by the 2015 Declaration of Principles for the mutual benefit of all parties, without causing harm to any party.
The Khartoum meeting was held to continue discussions over the technical reports on the dam, but officials announced a lack of agreement on the issue, but said that they would hold a meeting within a month with experts from the three countries.
Last week, Egypt’s minister of water resources and irrigation, Mohamed Abdel Aaty headed to Ethiopia to attend the 18th meeting of the technical committee on the GERD over outstanding disagreements between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia over the technical report written by French consulting firms Artelia and BRL. The meetings also aimed to reaffirm the agreed upon articles of the Declaration of Principles on the GERD, signed between them in 2015.
The construction of the GERD started in April 2011. Egypt has expressed concerns that the construction of the dam could negatively affect its historic Nile water share of 55bn cubic metres, which it has access to since a 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan. However, Ethiopian leaders have repeatedly affirmed that it will not impact Egypt’s water share.
