Bashir orders 5,000 cows as gift from Sudan to Egypt ahead of PM visit

March 26, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir granted Egypt 5.000 cows as a gift ahead of the visit on Sunday by the Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

Sudan official news agency (SUNA) quoted foreign ministry spokesperson Khalid Moussa as saying that this was pledged during Bashir’s visit to Cairo earlier this month. Bashir was the first Arab ruler to visit Egypt following the removal of president Hosni Mubarak through a popular uprising that started in late January.

“During his last trip to Egypt (at the beginning of March), President Omar al-Bashir announced that he would give the Egyptians 5,000 cows as a present,” Moussa told Agence France Presse (AFP).

“We will start sending the cows on Monday. There will be a ceremony beforehand at Al-Kadaru in north Khartoum,” he added.

The London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat cited observers who said that this gift by Bashir was as celebration to the end of Mubarak’s era who ruled Egypt since 1981.

The government sponsored Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website today launched a fierce attack on Mubarak’s regime saying it practiced blackmailing against Khartoum since the failed attempt on Egyptian president’s life in Addis Ababa in 1995 blamed on Islamists backed by Sudan.

It also said that the Cairo under Mubarak occupied the disputed Halayeb triangle on the borders, pushed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose sanctions on Sudan and hosted opposition groups in the 90’s that were seeking to topple Bashir’s government.

The Egyptian PM will be accompanied by the ministers of agriculture, electricity, irrigation and international cooperation. He is expected to visit Khartoum and Juba.

Talks will likely focus on the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) which would strip Egypt of its veto right over all upstream projects including irrigation and hydropower. Sudan has stood firmly in rejecting any amendment to the original treaty.

Egypt held dominant right on Nile water following powers granted by a 1929 colonial-era treaty with Britain. Its subsequent 1959 deal with Sudan gave the two downstream countries more than 90 percent control of Nile waters.

The NBI signed in May 2010 by Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia will curb that right. Other affected countries, including Kenya, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were given one year to ink the deal.

Kenya signed shortly after the ceremony and Burundi signed earlier this month, the last possible day for signature.

Egypt says the river’s waters feed a farming sector accounting for a third of all jobs. Cairo fears a reduction in its water flow will bring closer the date on which population growth will outstrip water resources, now thought possible as early as 2017.

Under the original deal, Egypt is entitled to 55.5 billion cubic meters of water a year, the lion’s share of the Nile’s total flow of around 84 billion cubic meters.

(ST)