The two-day tripartite talks involving Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan in Cairo this week, over the controversial Nile dam, ended in a stalemate. But the three countries have scheduled a fresh round in September in Addis Ababa.
After the session in Egypt, it turned out Egypt and Ethiopia have not climbed down from their irreducible minimums, making it a slim chance that the next talks will produce any positive results.
The talks largely centred on how to fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd) on the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.
In a statement to the media, Mohamed Ghanem, the spokesperson for Egypt’s Irrigation and Water Resources Ministry, said Ethiopia’s stance remains unchanged and negotiations have not brought anything new.
Cairo maintains that their colonial of 1929 and 1959 Anglo-Egyptian agreements that gave them the veto powers must be respected. This is despite the 2010 Nile Basin Cooperative Frame Agreement (CFA) that gave upstream countries the power to share Nile waters.
Source: The East African