Egypt announced, on Wednesday, its support for Sudan’s proposal to form a quadripartite international mediation, to solve the stalled “Renaissance” dam negotiations.
This came during a meeting between Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, with the coordinator of the work cell concerned with the Democratic Republic of the Congo presidency of the African Union, Alfons Ntumba, in Cairo, according to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement.
The statement quoted Shukry as saying that “Egypt supports Sudan’s proposal to form an international quartet that includes the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the African Union to mediate negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.”
He added that the proposal would “assist the three countries (Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia) in developing the negotiation mechanism and pushing the negotiation path forward to reach the desired agreement at the earliest opportunity.”
The Egyptian Minister affirmed his country’s keenness to inform the Democratic Republic of the Congo (chairing the African Union in its current session) of the latest developments in the Renaissance Dam file, for the African Union’s sponsorship of the negotiation process.
He also expressed his country’s “aspiration to assist the Democratic Republic of the Congo in reaching a binding legal agreement on the rules for filling and operating the dam, taking into account the interests of the three countries,” according to the same statement.
On Monday, the Sudanese Minister of Irrigation, Yasser Abbas, announced his country’s intention to conduct “diplomatic and political contacts” to support quadripartite mediation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, through the involvement of the United Nations, the European Union and the United States, along with the African Union.
And the United States and the World Bank had previously intervened, more than a year ago, in the Renaissance Dam negotiations between Cairo, Khartoum and Addis Ababa, but they did not produce any results.
Ethiopia insists on the start of the second filling of the Renaissance Dam, next July, while Khartoum and Cairo adhere to first reaching a tripartite agreement, to preserve their annual share of the Nile water, amid stalled negotiations led by the African Union for months.
