Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdouk has called on his Egyptian and Ethiopian counterparts to hold a tripartite summit meeting within 10 days on the controversial Ethiopian dam.
The meeting would take place to evaluate the negotiations that have taken place on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which recently reached a dead end.
Hamdouk called for discussions and agreement on possible options to move forward in negotiations, and renew the political commitment of the three countries to reach an agreement in a timely manner.
This would take place in accordance with the agreement of principles signed between the three countries on 23 March 2015.
In a message addressed to his Ethiopian and Egyptian counterparts, Hamdouk said that negotiations have reached a dead end at a time when the construction work on the dam has reached an advanced stage.
This entails that reaching an agreement before the start of the dam’s operation is an urgent necessity and matter, the Sudanese cabinet said.
“It is regrettable that 10 years of negotiations have elapsed without reaching an agreement,” Hamdouk said.
He added, “This call comes in accordance with the Declaration of Principles, of which Article 10 stipulates that the matter be referred to the heads of government of the three countries, if an agreement cannot be reached on the negotiators.”
Since the direct negotiations under the auspices of the African Union (AU) have failed, Hamdouk noted, to reach an agreement, Sudan calls for a closed meeting between the prime ministers of the three countries via virtual means.
The negotiations, sponsored by the AU since June 2020 and which included the recent ministerial meetings held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), did not lead to an agreement. The recent negotiations in the DRC also failed to establish a framework for negotiation acceptable to all parties.
