Ethiopia claims GERD will cause no ‘thirst’ for Sudan, Egypt: Al-Arabiya interview

CAIRO – 8 July 2020: Ethiopia will not be a cause for “thirst” for any Egypt and Sudan by filling and operating the Grand Renaissance Dam, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew on Wednesday told Saudi Al-Arabiya.

This comes days after Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in a speech at a United Nations Security Council meeting warned that filling and operating the dam without an agreement will endanger the lives of 150 million Egyptian and Sudanese citizens.

Andargachew said Egypt and Sudan should not be afraid of the “water flows” due to the dam, and slammed some “exaggerations and incorrect demands” by the Egyptian side.

Andargachew cited “negotiations with good intention” as the only way to resolve the issue of the massive dam. This comes while Egypt’s irrigation minister said earlier that Ethiopia does not have the real desire to reach an agreement on GERD.

The Ethiopian minister also referred to the role of the US, saying that his country welcomes the US participation in GERD issue as an observer “not a mediator”.

Andargachew in June said controversial remarks to Associated Press on GERD that angered many political figures in Egypt.

“For us it is not mandatory to reach an agreement before starting filling the dam, hence we will commence the filling process in the coming rainy season,” he said.

Moreover, Andargachew accused Egyptians of “exaggerating their propaganda on the dam issue and playing a political gamble,” and said that some of them even “seem as if they are longing for a war to break out.”

The conflict between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia dates back to May 2011 when Ethiopia started building the dam; Egypt voiced concern over its water share [55.5 billion cubic meters]. Three years later, a series of tripartite talks between the two countries along with Sudan began to reach an agreement while Ethiopia continued the dam construction.

In 2015, the three countries signed the Declaration of Principles, per which the downstream countries should not be negatively affected by the construction of the dam. In October 2019, Egypt blamed Addis Ababa for hindering a final agreement concerning a technical problem, calling for activating Article No. 10 of the Declaration of Principles, which stipulates that if the three countries could not find a solution to these disputes, they have to ask for mediation.