Crisis dam Renaissance .. Egypt presses and Ethiopia refuses to involve a fourth party negotiations

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will try to press Ethiopia this week to accept an external mediator to resolve the rift over the Renaissance Dam, which Egypt says threatens its share of the Nile, while Addis Ababa refuses to involve a fourth party in stalled negotiations, Egyptian officials said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi is expected to raise the question of a mediator's request when he meets Ethiopian Prime Minister Abe Ahmed at an African-Russian summit in Russia this week.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official told reporters yesterday that the Egyptian side hoped that Sisi and Abe's meeting would lead to an agreement regarding the participation of a fourth party in the talks.

Egyptian officials said they had proposed that the World Bank be a fourth intermediary, but left open the possibility that the mediator would be a country with technical expertise on issues of water allocation such as the United States or the European Union.

But Ethiopia is firmly against a fourth party in talks with Egypt and Sudan on the Renaissance Dam, which Ethiopia is expected to start filling its reservoir next year.

Days ago, the correspondent of Al Jazeera Net in Khartoum that Sudan and Ethiopia refused to enter a fourth party in the trilateral talks.

For his part, Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy Salshi Bakli said that his country refuses to mediate from any side, and that negotiations will continue between the three countries to reach an agreement.

He added that his government would not provide any guarantees on the Egyptian conditions for the flow of the Nile water, denying in the meantime Egyptian statements that the tripartite negotiations reached a dead end.

Ethiopia has rejected recent proposals by Egypt that the filling of the reservoir behind the dam be flexible and ensure the flow of water at 40 billion cubic meters annually.

A gap widens
Rounds of talks in Cairo and Khartoum over the past two months have not led to an agreement, but an Egyptian foreign ministry official said the gap was widening.

Egypt sees the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as an existential threat, and fears that it would threaten already scarce water resources in Egypt and affect the generation of electricity from the Aswan High Dam.

Egypt says it has exhausted efforts to reach an agreement on the terms of operation of the dam and fill the reservoir behind it after three years of trilateral talks with Ethiopia and Sudan.

Ethiopia denies stalling the tripartite talks and accuses Egypt of trying to evade negotiations.

Egypt relies on the Nile for almost all potable water supplies and faces growing water poverty with a population of about 100 million. Egypt says it is working to reduce water used in agriculture.

Egyptian officials say Egypt's per capita currently stands at 570 cubic meters of water a year and is expected to reach 500 cubic meters by 2025, without taking into account the potential losses from the construction of the Renaissance Dam.