Ethiopia calls Egypt to resume talks over dam

Ethiopia has urged Egypt for another round of tripartite talks with Sudan to implement international recommendations over the construction of its hydroelectric dam on the Nile, an Egyptian news agency reported Thursday.

“We seek to persuade the Egyptian authorities to avoid unnecessary complaints against the dam and to resume the tripartite talks with Ethiopia and Sudan,” the state-run news agency MENA quoted Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn as saying during a parliament meeting.

Desalegn said his country is ready to respond if Egypt decided to take its dispute over the Grand Renaissance Dam to the United Nations.

Thirty-one percent of the dam’s construction was already complete, Desalegn said, adding that the dam would begin generating electricity next year.
Ethiopia building the damn could transform one of the world’s poorest countries into a regional hydropower hub.

Addis Ababa has already rejected an offer from Cairo to help finance building the dam and opted to fully pay for the project.

Power-hungry region

The electricity it will generate - enough to power a giant rich-world city like New York - can be exported across a power-hungry region.
So far, Ethiopia has paid 27 billion birr ($1.5 billion) out of a total projected cost of 77 billion birr for the dam, which will create a lake 246 km long, according to Reuters.
Economists warn that squeezing the private sector to pay for the public infrastructure could hurt future prospects. Growth is already showing signs of slowing.
Egypt, which has claimed exclusive right to control the Nile’s waters for generations, is infuriated. Cairo worries the dam will reduce the flow on which it has depended for drinking water and irrigation for thousands of years.
Talks between Ethiopia and Egypt deteriorated in recent months but officials from the two countries still insist they will continue to meet in order to solve the dispute.
Egypt has demanded building be halted pending negotiations between the countries.
Cairo no longer wields the same leverage it once did when upriver sub-Saharan countries were too poor to build such huge projects themselves.
(With Reuters)

Last Update: Friday, 25 April 2014 KSA 09:16 - GMT 06:16 

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/04/25/Ethiopia-calls-Egypt-to-resume-talks-over-dam.html

25/4/14

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• Ethiopia insists that it must build a series of dams. Dialogue only way to bridge Ethiopia-Egypt gap. -PM  ...

 

Citing its own development needs, however, Ethiopia insists that it must build a series of dams to generate electricity – both for local consumption and export.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn said Monday that dialogue was the only way to bridge outstanding differences between Ethiopia and Egypt about a multi-billion dollar hydroelectric dam on the Nile River. "I know dialogue will continue. I don't see there will be a military solution and [talk of] war is absurd. It doesn't work," Dessalegn told a press conference in Addis Ababa.
"This kind of problem is solved through dialogue," he said. "From the Ethiopian side, we are ready to see a cooperative way to find solution through dialogue." Plans by Ethiopia to build a massive hydroelectric dam, dubbed the "Grand Renaissance Dam Project," on the Blue Nile – the primary source of Egypt's water supply –sent shockwaves down Egypt's Nile Valley.
Water distribution among the states of the Nile basin have long depended on a colonial-era treaty giving Egypt and Sudan the lion's share of Nile water.

• Citing its own development needs, however, Ethiopi
• a insists that it must build a series of dams to generate electricity – both for local consumption and export.

Addis Ababa maintains that the new dam will benefit Egypt and Sudan, both of which will be invited to purchase electricity thus generated. The Ethiopian premier said that his country wants to see a stable and democratic Egypt. "If General [Abdel-Fattah] al-Sisi is elected, I am ready to work with him," he said. Calls have grown for al-Sisi, who led the army move to unseat elected president Mohamed Morsi, to run in Egypt's upcoming presidential election, expected within three months. Turning to the conflict in South Sudan, the Ethiopian premier said that the Inter-government Authority for Development (IGAD) has authorized the Ugandan army to protect the government in Juba. "We denounce unconstitutional power seizure and this is the position of all IGAD states," he said. "IGAD has a clear position in this regard. Uganda has to protect the government." He, however, said that forces from Uganda and other countries must leave South Sudan phase by phase.............................http://www.ellanodikis.net/2014/02/ethiopia-insists-that-it-must-build.html

10/2/14