Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia hold tripartite summit on GERD

CAIRO - 27 January 2018: A tripartite summit between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia on a presidential level will convene on the sideline of the 30th summit of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa to discuss the controversial issue of Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD), Egypt’s presidential spokesperson Bassam Radi told Akhbar al-Youm on Saturday.

The two-day summit will kick off on Sunday.

On January 22, diplomatic sources told Egypt Today that Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn suggested holding a tripartite summit with the leaders of Nile downstream countries (Egypt and Sudan) on the sidelines of the AU Summit, during his visit to Cairo on January 20.

The summit follows years of negotiations, since May 2011, between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan over GERD. Egypt has voiced its concerns regarding the dam’s capacity of water storage, fearing that it may negatively affects its share of Nile water.

However, Ethiopia has repeatedly denied any negative affect for the GERD on Egypt’s share of the Nile water, as stipulated in the statements made by the Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn during his official visit to Cairo last week.

A day after finishing his visit, Desalegn asserted Ethiopia’s rejection to include the World Bank in the tripartite technical committee’s talks regarding the dam as suggested by Egypt.

Egypt has previously approved the report prepared by PRL Consulting Company on the guidelines that should be followed during GERD construction period; however, Ethiopia and Sudan rejected the findings of the report, crippling the continuation of the necessary studies to establish the dam.


Controversy over the Declaration of Principles

In March 2015, the leaders of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia signed the "Declaration of Principles" in a step to put an end to the four-year dispute over Nile water sharing arrangements among Nile Basin countries.

The 10-principles declaration was the foundation of any further agreements and was first of many steps on the path of understanding and rapprochement between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.

Diplomatic sources expected that the coming visit would witness an end to the crisis, otherwise the situation would become more complicated.

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Additional reporting by Dunya Hassanin and Mohamed Abdel Maguid