Sudan’s Sovereign Council on Monday said the United States and the European Union have expressed readiness to mediate in the issue of the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), reported Xinhuanet.
According to the statement, Donald Booth, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, and Robert van den Dool, head of the EU delegation to Sudan, have expressed their readiness to mediate in the GERD issue during a meeting with Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, chairman of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, at the presidential palace.
“The two envoys stressed the need to reach a diplomatic solution for the dispute over the GERD, on the basis of a satisfactory approach that guarantees Ethiopia use of electricity, Sudan safety of its territorial integrity and security of its dams, and Egypt its water rights,” the statement noted.
Al-Burhan said the Sudanese government was committed to find peaceful and diplomatic solutions for its differences with Ethiopia.
Earlier this month, Sudan had called for mediation from the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and the United States regarding the issue of the GERD. But, Ethiopia has rejected the mediation quartet.
The Ethiopian government says it will continue with the second-phase 13.5-billion-cubic-meter filling of the GERD in the coming rainy season, which starts in July, despite the concerns of the two countries. Last year,tThe volume of the first-phase filling was 4.9 billion cubic meters.
Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have not been able to reach an agreement over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.
Ethiopia began construction of the GERD back in 2011. It expects to generate more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project. Egypt and Sudan, the two downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the Nile river for its freshwater supplies, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources.
