Sudan FM says recent meeting over Nile dam achieved positive outcome

December 17, 2015 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour revealed that the recent tripartite meeting on Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD) held in Khartoum last week has achieved positive results but that it was withheld from the media.

The ministers of water and foreign affairs in Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia concluded the talks last Saturday which were widely believed to have failed to bridge the differences particularly between Ethiopia and Egypt.

Ghandour nonetheless expressed hope that these “positive” results could soon be articulated in the form of an agreement that satisfies all sides during the meeting scheduled to be held in Khartoum later this month.

He emphasized in an interview with Egypt’s Middle East News Agency (MENA) that the negotiations are tough, explaining that water is a matter of national security for any country and that “everyone’s job is to make sure that National Security is preserved for all of us”.

“Sudan has stressed that it is neither a mediator nor neutral or biased, but we are owners and partners”, Ghandour said and pointed out that Sudan seeks to protect the rights in Egypt and Ethiopia as well.

“We emerged [from last week’s meeting] to agree on another meeting which was after we tabled some of the principles and requirements assigned to the technical committees .. which we agreed at the same time that we will not mention to the press,” the Sudanese official said.

Ghandour explained that media sometimes tend to report things by putting them out of context.

He recalled that the Declaration of Principles signed by the three presidents last March in Khartoum confirmed that no party should be negatively affected by the dam.

“This is the principle of which we are discussing ways to affirm it through an agreement through an accord submitted to the political leadership,” Ghandour said.

When asked about his level of optimism, the foreign minister said “I am not saying that I am optimistic or pessimistic but the spirit that I have witnessed suggests that we can agree in the next tripartite meeting in Khartoum”.

The GERD, scheduled to be completed in 2017, will be Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant with a storage capacity of 74 billion cubic meters of water.

Egypt has repeatedly expressed concerns that filling and operating the dam on the Blue Nile will negatively affect Egypt’s water supply, while Ethiopia has rejected those claims.

(ST)