Khartoum announced its participation in a ministerial meeting sponsored by the African Union on the negotiations of the Renaissance Dam, on Sunday, while sources revealed that the meeting will be hypothetically hexagonal with the participation of foreign and irrigation ministers from Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.
The official Sudanese News Agency reported - Saturday - that the Foreign Minister-designate Omar Qamar al-Din, and the Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Yasser Abbas, will participate in the ministerial meeting of the Renaissance Dam negotiations that will resume on Sunday.
She added that the meeting will be chaired by Mrs. Pana Dora, Minister of International Cooperation of the Republic of South Africa, who is chairing the current session of the African Union.
The agency quoted an unnamed official source, that the meeting will discuss Sudan's proposal to activate the negotiations by giving a greater role to the African Union through its experts to reach a binding legal agreement regarding the Renaissance Dam, according to Sudan's previous request, and then consider the draft understanding prepared by the African Union experts to reach a satisfactory agreement. For the three sides.
In the same context, the private Sudanese newspaper, "Al-Change", quoted informed diplomatic sources, that the meeting will be a hexagonal and hypothetical, at the invitation of the African Union to move the stalled and frozen path of negotiation since last November.
According to the sources, Khartoum accepted the invitation and agreed to engage in the negotiations that include the foreign and water ministers of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia, after its withdrawal from the round that was held on November 21, 2020, and its stipulation that a greater role be given to the African Union experts.
Egypt and Ethiopia did not announce their stances from participating in the meeting until this news was written.
The meeting comes days after the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced - on Wednesday - the summoning of the Ethiopian Chargé d'Affairs to Cairo.
A protest against "interference in internal affairs" on the part of Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti, without details of what the latter said.
On November 4, the irrigation ministers of the three countries agreed to end the round of negotiations that started at the beginning of the month and return the file to the African Union.
And in mid-December last year, Sudanese Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Yasser Abbas, said that his country adheres to changing the methodology of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam negotiations, by giving a greater role to the African Union experts, suggesting not to participate if the previous approach from Addis Ababa continues.
Negotiations between the three countries stalled over a period of 9 years, amid mutual accusations between Cairo and Addis Ababa of intransigence and imposing unrealistic solutions.
Addis Ababa insists on filling the dam even if it does not reach an agreement with Cairo and Khartoum, while the latter two insist on the need to reach a tripartite agreement regarding the dam on the Blue Nile, one of the tributaries of the Nile River.
Cairo is concerned about the potential negative impact of the dam on the flow of its annual share of the Nile water, which amounts to 55.5 billion cubic meters, while Sudan gets 18.5 billion.
While Addis Ababa says it does not aim to harm anyone, and that the purpose of building the dam is primarily to generate electricity.