Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasir Abbas on Monday said Sudan is open to a partial interim agreement on Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile, with specific conditions, Reuters.
Given the time constraints, Sudan will accept an interim agreement based on certain conditions which include signing on all the terms that have been already agreed,” Abbas told reporters in Khartoum. “There should also be guarantees that negotiations will continue … and that those talks will be held within a defined timeframe.”
The Sudanese minister said the three countries had already reached a consensus over most technical matters but failed to reach a binding deal.
Ethiopia reached its first target of filling the dam last year and has announced it will proceed in July with or without a deal.
Egypt, which depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its water supply, sees the dam as an existential threat. Sudan fears that the Nile dam will regulate annual flooding but fears its own dams would be harmed without agreement on its operation.
The negotiation talks had been stalled since African Union (AU) sponsored negotiations in Kinshasa in April.
On Sunday, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok stressed the need to reach a binding legal agreement about the filling and operation of the controversial dam.
During a meeting with the chairman of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat, the prime minister said a legal agreement would enable Sudan to go ahead with its development projects and avoid any harm that could be caused due to lack of detailed information regarding the filling and operation of the dam.
Last week, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry had sent a letter to the UN Security Council to reaffirm its complete rejection of Ethiopia’s unilateral measures on the filling of the disputed dam on the Nile River.
