Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia reach accords on Nile River projects: report

CAIRO, June 26 (AFP) — Ministers from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have reached agreement on a variety of projects involving the waters of the Nile River, which they all share, the state MENA news agency said Saturday.

The countries’ water ministers had been meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh since Thursday to discuss drinking water projects, the building of hydro-electric power stations and the establishment of experimental farms and fishing zones in depressed areas.

MENA said they had agreed to “rapidly undertake joint projects, especially in irrigation, agricultural development and electricity and of drinking water supply.

Ethiopian minister Shiferaw Jarso said the gathering had ushered in a “new era of understanding and cooperation.”

His Sudanese counterpart, Kamal Ali, said the parties had agreed to “block foreign interference with the waters of the Nile.”

Colonial-era agreements imposed by Britain prohibited Nile basin states other than Egypt from undertaking projects that would reduce the river’s flow.

But in 1999 Egypt finally agreed with the other nine littoral states to thrash out a new framework for sharing the river’s resources.

Jarso said on Thursday that water could be “better managed, better exploited,” stressing that “integrated management of the Nile is in the interest of all countries in the river basin”.

Egypt’s independent press regularly writes about dam construction projects underway in Ethiopia, allegedly in cooperation with Israel, which could slacken the flow of water and affect Cairo’s Nile water supply.

But Egyptian Water Resources Minister Mahmud Abu Zeid said Ethiopia had the “right” to build dams and that Egypt looked forward to cooperating with it on the matter.

Some 85 percent of the Nile’s flow comes down the Blue Nile from Ethiopia.