The Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation received formal approval from its Ethiopian counterpart to start tripartite negotiations for the Renaissance Dam in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on 25 and 26 August.
Irrigation Minister Hossam Hegazy said in a press statement on Wednesday that the new round of negotiations will focus on the periods during which the dam’s tank would be filled and its connection to the drought years.
“Negotiations will start from where they left off and not from scratch,” he said, adding that the Khartoum meeting will build on the joint statement issued by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Prime Minister Mariam Dessalines on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Malabo.
“Egypt requested a neutral international party, but Ethiopia refused,” Hegazy added. “All points of disagreement will be tackled so that we do not waste time during negotiations.”
"The storage capacity of the dam is 74 billion cubic meters of water," the minister said. "This is a scary figure."
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
