Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have failed again to reach an agreement on the Renaissance Dam, which Ethiopia is building on the Nile, raising Egypt concerns that it would harm its share of water.
After two days of talks in Addis Ababa, Cairo said that the three countries “were unable to reach consensus”, blaming the Ethiopian capital for “lack of clear procedures to face various effects that could result from filling and operating the dam’s reservoir, particularly in prolonged periods of droughts.”
The final round of four meetings between the three countries ended on Thursday, with the participation of representatives of the United States and the World Bank.
Delegations from the three countries are scheduled to meet on Monday in Washington to assess the situation, while a deadline for an agreement to fill the reservoir and operate the dam expires next Wednesday.
The three states have earlier decided to activate Article No. 10 of the Declaration of Principles signed in Khartoum in 2015, which stipulates that if they could not find a solution to their differences by mid-January 2020, they have to ask for mediation.
“During the two-day discussions, Egypt submitted a series of proposals and studies that guarantee for Ethiopia to generate electricity continuously and efficiently during periods of severe drought without causing harm to the Egyptian water share,” Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation said in a statement on Thursday.
“However, no agreement was reached between the three countries on the amounts of water that should flow from the dam in the different hydrological conditions of the Blue Nile River, where the dam is being built,” the statement added.
The ministry stressed that the Ethiopian side did not provide “vivid measures that keep Egypt’s High Dam able to face various effects that could result from filling and operating the Renaissance dam’s reservoir, particularly in prolonged periods of droughts.”
On the other hand, Ethiopian Minister of Water Seleshi Bekele accused Egypt of “coming to the talks without the intention of reaching an agreement.”
In a press conference, he said: “We did not agree on the issue of filling the dam because Egypt has come up with a new matrix that sets the time of the filling in 12 to 21 years.”
“That is unacceptable,” Seleshi said, adding Ethiopia would begin to fill the dam as of July.
Ethiopia has completed nearly 70 percent of the dam’s construction, according to official statements. The Ethiopian Minister of Irrigation has previously asserted that the first stage of filling the reservoir would begin in July 2020.
