The Renaissance Dam negotiations ... a tripartite agreement to continue the meetings and the continuation of the disparity between Egypt and Ethiopia

Cairo, Khartoum and Addis Ababa agreed today, Sunday, to hold meetings this week, with the African Union team of experts, which sponsored the negotiations, to discuss the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis.

This came at the conclusion of a meeting held by the Foreign and Irrigation Ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, through visual communication technology, under the auspices of the African Union, according to two statements by the Egyptian and Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Irrigation.

While the Egyptian Foreign Ministry insisted that a binding agreement must be reached before the start of the second phase of the filling of the Renaissance Dam, and that this agreement should achieve the common interests of the three countries and secure Egypt's rights and water interests;

Ethiopia has assured that it will not agree to any deal on the dam that in any way limits its right to use the waters of the Nile.

In a statement by the Ethiopian Ministry of Irrigation, she clarified that most of the issues related to the first mobilization and annual operation of the Renaissance Dam have been agreed upon, and that the main disagreement lies in the joint guidelines, rules for filling the Renaissance Dam and future development projects, but at the same time it gave space for diplomacy, certainly Addis Ababa is ready to use The AU draft as a single working document for the tripartite negotiations.

According to the Sudanese News Agency, during today's meeting, the three countries reviewed their positions on the possibility of reaching a formula that would allow the resumption of negotiations, in light of the positive development that the African experts submitted a memorandum of agreement to the three countries.

And "Khartoum welcomed this development, and considered it insufficient in light of the lack of a clear role for experts in facilitating negotiations and proposing solutions in future issues," according to the agency itself.

The meeting concluded - according to the Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation's statement - to the adoption of Khartoum’s proposal to allocate this week to bilateral meetings between the three countries and the group of experts and observers.

The Sudanese Agency quoted the Minister of International Cooperation in South Africa, Guy Pandora, her request that these meetings be devoted to identifying points of agreement and disagreement between the three countries, provided that the tripartite meetings will reconvene on Sunday the tenth of January, with the hope that the negotiations will be concluded by the end of the same month, and before The end of the South African presidency of the African Union session.

For its part, Cairo stressed the necessity of reaching an agreement on the Renaissance Dam at the earliest possible opportunity, and before the start of the second phase of filling the dam reservoir, in a way that achieves the common interests of the three countries and at the same time secures Egypt's rights and water interests.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry stated - in a press statement - that the meeting reached an agreement to hold a one-week round of negotiations between the three countries.

With the aim of discussing the substantive aspects and contentious points of the GERD agreement, in the presence of observers who participate in the negotiations and experts appointed by the African Union Commission, and at the end of this week another six-member ministerial meeting will be held under the chairmanship of South Africa to consider the outcomes of the tripartite negotiation round.

Negotiations have stalled since last November, after several rounds failed to approximate positions between the three countries concerned, especially between Ethiopia and Egypt, regarding the rules for mobilizing and operating the dam, which is being built on the Blue Nile near the Ethiopian-Sudanese borders, at a cost of more than 4 billion. Dollars.

Negotiations between the three countries stalled over the past 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 Egypt and Sudan insist on the need to reach a tripartite agreement regarding the dam on the Blue Nile.

A tributary 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, and Addis Ababa says it does not aim to harm anyone, and that the main goal of building the dam is to generate electricity.