Sudan says Egypt requested postponement of tripartite meeting on Ethiopian dam

Monday, November 23, 2015

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The Sudanese minister of Water Resources and Electricity Moatez Moussa said today that the tripartite meeting with his counterparts in Egypt and Ethiopia on the Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD) which was scheduled for late November in Khartoum was postponed to a later date at the request of the Cairo.

The controversial dam being built on the Blue Nile, about 20 kilometers from the Sudanese border, has a storage capacity of 74 billion cubic meters with the potential to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity.

Egypt fears that the construction of the $4.3 billion dam will diminish its water share which is a source of water to millions people of the desert nation. It has fiercely sought to sway Ethiopia from its plans with no success.

Sudan eventually gave its blessings to the dam drawing the irk of the Egyptian government.

Moussa said that Egypt wanted to merge this meeting with a separate one that brings together the foreign ministers of the same countries.

He stressed that the delay was warranted by scheduling issues related to the foreign ministers and no other reasons.

Some Egyptian newspapers accused Sudan of postponing the meeting in retaliation to tensions between the two countries over alleged mistreatment of Sudanese nationals in Egypt.

The meeting is supposed to be held in the presence of the two French and Dutch consultancy firms to reconcile their convergent views with regard to the mechanisms of implementation of the required studies.

The three countries will also discuss contingency plans in the absence of agreement between the firms which would include picking new ones and restarting the selection process all over again.

The three countries had previously formed a committee to select a consultancy firm to assess the impact of GERD on Sudan and Egypt.

During the 9th round of negotiations held in Cairo earlier this month, Egypt handed the Ethiopian side a list of its observations on the dam officially which focused mainly on the acceleration of the dam construction while slowing down the negotiations which would not allow for the implementation of the recommendations of the consultancy firms.

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