Is Egypt addresses itself in the crisis of the Renaissance Dam and Ethiopia is completely uniquely?

Mohamed Abdullah - Cairo

Since announcing the failure of the Renaissance Dam negotiations with Ethiopia, reaching a dead end, and calling for an international mediator in October 2019, Cairo does not stop issuing the statement after the other even with the absence of the other main party in the negotiation, which is Ethiopia.

The data issued by the official Egyptian authorities have consistently confirmed commitment to the diplomatic solution and the negotiating track in order to reach a final agreement on the rules for filling and operating the Renaissance Dam, as Egypt relies on the Nile to secure 95% of its water needs.

Although the Egyptian authorities exercised great caution, pursued excessive diplomatic language, and carefully selected vocabulary in talking about Ethiopia, the course of negotiations, their outputs and results, and repeated calls not to harm the interests of others, they did not receive listening ears on the other side, and they seemed to address themselves.

Ethiopian strike
Hours after Egypt first signed the agreement in its initials while participating in the meeting that the United States called on February 27 and 28 last February, and looked forward to it "that Sudan and Ethiopia follow suit in announcing their acceptance of this agreement and signing it at the earliest Time "; the Ethiopian response came as shocking.

The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said - in a statement - that "the text that is said to have been signed by Egypt in the American capital Washington, is not the outcome of negotiations, nor the technical and political discussions of the three countries," expressing its "disappointment" with the US Treasury statement on the dam.

On Saturday evening, Ethiopia announced that it would not participate in any negotiations on the Renaissance Dam "that would harm the national interests of the country," noting that it would start filling the dam reservoir on the Blue Nile with the completion of construction.

In a statement, the US Treasury expressed its opposition to the start of filling the dam without concluding an agreement between the three countries (Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan), noting the downstream country’s concern about the unfinished work on the safe operation of the dam, and the need to implement all necessary safety measures for the dams in accordance with international standards Before filling begins.

Egypt is committed
Water expert at the United Nations, Professor of Water Resources Ahmed Fawzi, ruled out that "Ethiopia would go ahead with filling the lake of the dam without reaching an agreement, which was confirmed by the US Treasury Secretary, indicating that it did not reject the agreement."

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, he affirmed that Egypt is committed to the diplomatic path until others announce that they are not committed to it, expressing his hope that Ethiopia will return to negotiations to resolve matters in a friendly and peaceful manner, otherwise Egypt has no choice but to transfer the file to the Security Council.

He added that the Ethiopian side will not find a single Egyptian - regardless of his direction and political affiliation - agreeing to the shortage of Egypt's share of water, and Ethiopia believes that it can ignore everyone and move forward in filling the reservoir of the Renaissance Dam without the agreement of the three sides, but it is rejected, and it is a declaration from them to reject Solve the issue peacefully.

Either agreement or sabotage the dam
Ambassador Abdullah Al-Ashaal, a former assistant foreign minister, described the Egyptian position as "bad, and does not rise to the level of responsibility since the beginning of the confrontation of the Renaissance Dam crisis in a diplomatic manner," noting that "there are Ethiopian-Israeli-American understandings to deprive Egypt of its share in the waters of the Nile."

And evidence of his speech in statements to Al-Jazeera Net that Ethiopia is moving on the issue of the Renaissance Dam on a straight line and ascending confrontational, and this is not evidenced by its announcement that it will start filling the dam in parallel with the completion of the construction process, and diverting the waters of the Blue Nile, which supplies the Nile River with about 85% of its water resources. .

He believed that the negotiations are not evidence of a settlement, as the warring countries enter into negotiations, but rather a path of communication between the hostile parties, and Egypt, with depriving it of its share of 55 billion cubic meters, only has sabotage of the dam by any means, so that it does not literally die and its agricultural lands disappear from the map.

Egypt addresses itself
As for the political analyst, Mohamed El Sayed Ramadan, he believes that Egypt is really addressing itself in light of losing all the pressure papers on Ethiopia, which does not pay any attention to any negotiations of any kind with any party anywhere, noting that "Ethiopia is procrastinating and being bored in signing to gain more time to impose New terms. "

In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, he did not rule out that the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abi Ahmed exploited the Renaissance Dam paper - with the approaching of the internal elections - to gain more popular support, by imposing Ethiopia's conditions on the rules, stages and duration of filling and operating the dam, and this would be a disaster for the Egyptian people who entered the stage Water poverty before filling begins.

Ramadan - who lives in France - saw Egypt signing the Declaration of Principles on the Renaissance Dam project on March 23, 2015, according to which Egypt recognized Ethiopia's right to build the dam; giving Ethiopia the green light to expedite the completion of its construction, and to adopt the agreement as a key document in Ignore the negotiations that followed.