The Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation revealed that the Renaissance Dam that Ethiopia is building no longer controls the flow of water in the Blue Nile, while Cairo said it is monitoring the situation, while Addis Ababa confirmed that the politicization and internationalization of the dam negotiations will hinder the negotiation process.
The director of the Nile Water Department in the Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation, Abdel Rahman Saghiroun, said in a press statement that the level of water flow in the Blue Nile has returned to its normal levels after Ethiopia completed the second filling of the Renaissance Dam.
He pointed out that the level of floods so far is within the average, and in the first official statement regarding the volume of the second filling of the dam, the Sudanese official said that Ethiopia reserved only 4 billion cubic meters of water.
Al-Jazeera correspondent from the Roseires Dam, in the state of Blue Nile, southeast of Sudan, Al-Taher Al-Mardi, said that the level of the Blue Nile flow has returned to normal and is even in a steady increase, especially since the Roseires Dam administration announced that the daily water intake amounted to about 500 million cubic meters compared to yesterday's revenue, which amounted to 450 million.
He pointed out that the Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation said that the Renaissance Dam, after completing the second filling, no longer had an impact on the water flow, which came from the Blue Nile water, which constitutes a kind of reassurance regarding water shortage fears after filling the Renaissance Dam.
The levels of the Blue Nile rose in Sudan in an unprecedented manner, days after Ethiopia announced the completion of the second filling of the Renaissance Dam.
For his part, the Egyptian Minister of Irrigation, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, revealed that the level of the High Dam lake will increase in early August, due to the increase in rainfall rates at the sources of the Nile.
During his presidency of the River Revenue Committee, the Egyptian minister added to the instantaneous follow-up of the quantities of water entering the High Dam Lake, and to discuss the different scenarios of flooding.
He stressed the continuation of raising the state of alert and the degree of readiness to manage the water system with the highest degree of efficiency, to provide the necessary water needs for all sectors.
On the other hand, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Demke Meknan stressed that politicizing and internationalizing the Renaissance Dam negotiations is unnecessary and will contribute to obstructing the negotiation process.
According to a statement by the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry issued after the minister’s meeting with the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and Peacebuilding Rosemary DiCarlo.
The statement quoted the UN official as saying that the international organization supported the African Union's leadership of the negotiation process in order to reach amicable solutions for all parties.
Amid the stalled negotiations for months, Ethiopia on the fifth of this month notified the two countries downstream of the Nile, Egypt and Sudan, to start a second filling process of the dam with water, without reaching a tripartite agreement, which Cairo and Khartoum rejected, as a unilateral measure.
On the eighth of the same month, the UN Security Council concluded that the Renaissance Dam negotiations should be resumed intensively under the auspices of the African Union, to sign a binding legal agreement that meets the needs of the three countries.