Sudan warns of filling GERD reservoir without agreement

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Tue, 09 Jun 2020 - 10:26 GMT

BY

Tue, 09 Jun 2020 - 10:26 GMT

The Nile River, undated - Pixabay/qalbmoslem

The Nile River, undated - Pixabay/qalbmoslem

CAIRO - 9 June 2020: The Sudanese government has warned against filling the reservoir of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) before reaching an agreement between the three countries involved in the dam issue.

Filling the dam's reservoir would affect Sudan more than any of the other parties due to the dam's proximity to the Roseires Dam in southern Sudan, Government Spokesman and Minister of Culture and Information Mohamed Saleh said in a statement on Monday.

Earlier Tuesday, Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok conducted a meeting where has been briefed by the minister of irrigation and water resources on the previous developments on Ethiopia's dam issue.

He said a virtual meeting had scheduled between the Sudanese minister of irrigation and his Egyptian and Ethiopian counterparts to resume their talks on the dam issue on Tuesday.

Hamdok added that the dam negotiations had finalized 90 percent of its files, and they should resume from where they were suspended.

The difference between the countries dates back to May 2011 when Ethiopia started building the dam; Egypt voiced concern over its water share [55.5 billion cubic meters]. Three years later, a series of tripartite talks between the two countries along with Sudan began to reach an agreement while Ethiopia continued the dam construction.

In 2015, the three countries signed the Declaration of Principles, per which the downstream countries [Egypt and Sudan] should not be negatively affected by the construction of the dam. Since then, the talks have been resumed, but In October 2019 blamed Addis Ababa for hindering a final agreement concerning a technical problem, calling for activating the Article No. 10 of the Declaration of Principles, which stipulates that if the three countries could not find a solution to these differences, they have to ask for mediation.

Later, the United States sent an invitation to the three countries to resume the talks, and it has been agreed on November 6, 2019, in Washington to conduct the four rounds of meetings in the presence of representatives from the United States and the World Bank. The first meeting was held on November 15-16 in Addis Ababa, while the second round was on December 2-3 in Cairo. The third round convened in Khartoum on December 22-23.

Additional reporting by Samar Samir<\i>

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