Egypt has stepped up its rhetoric ahead of an upcoming African summit next Tuesday, in which the leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia will participate in search of a solution to the Renaissance Dam crisis, while Sudanese sources have reported a sudden decline in the waters of the Nile and its tributaries.
The Egyptian Minister of Irrigation told parliament that Cairo will not stand idly by about the Renaissance Dam, and that it does not play the role of spectator.
The Egyptian Presidency - according to the Egyptian Middle East News Agency - stated that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met today with the National Defense Council and discussed the overall political, security and military situations on all strategic directions of the state, in the context of developments of the various current challenges on the regional and international arenas.
The African Summit
As the crisis of the Renaissance Dam rises, attention is turning to a mini-African summit, an informed Sudanese source told Al-Jazeera that the African Union called for it next Tuesday, and the Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdock, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abi Ahmed will participate in it.
The summit will discuss contentious issues about the Renaissance Dam, the most prominent of which is addressing the effects of the short, medium and long years of drought during the filling and operation of the dam, the extent of the binding agreements to be reached between the three countries, and how to settle disputes if they arise over the agreements.
The Sudanese government source told Al-Jazeera that Khartoum and Cairo adhere to the necessity of what is agreed upon, and subject the differences that may appear to a specific reference.
The source added that Ethiopia accepts negotiations as a reference for resolving the differences.
Other Ethiopian dams
The head of the Sudanese Technical Committee in the negotiations of the Renaissance Dam, Saleh Hamad Hamid, told Al-Jazeera that Ethiopia wanted the agreement with Sudan and Egypt not to deprive it of building other dams.
The Sudanese official added that Addis Ababa wanted the agreement to specify the possibility of carrying out other projects besides the Renaissance Dam in the future.
For his part, Sudanese Minister of Irrigation Yasser Abbas said that his country would not be affected by the steps to unilaterally fill the Renaissance Dam, as Sudan was storing its water share at the end of August.
Sudden recession
In a new development, the Khartoum State Water Authority announced the exit of a number of its Nile stations from service due to a sudden recession of the White and Blue Nile and the Nile River, according to Sudanese media.
Those sources quoted the authority's director-general, Anwar Al-Sadat Al-Hajj Muhammad, as saying that several stations (Al-Salih A and B, Beit Al-Mal, North Bahri, Umm Kuti, and Al-Shajarah) were discharged due to the sudden receding of the three rivers.
It also revealed - according to the same source - that raw water pump platforms were lowered to their lowest levels in other stations (Soba water, old Bahri water station, Al-Muqrin water station, and Al-Manara water station), and that what resulted from the decline led to a reduction in the quantities of pure water produced from the stations The aforementioned, and that the authority informed the reservoir management that its stations were out of service due to the sudden decline.
In the same context, the Al-Jazeera correspondent in Sudan said that the Blue Nile River maintained its level of decline after 4 days after Ethiopia announced the start of mobilization of the Renaissance Dam reservoir, and that many farmers in the area of the Sudanese Al-Ruseiris Dam expressed their concerns about the impact of the Renaissance Dam on their farms.