CAIRO / KINSHASA (Reuters) – The latest meeting between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam may well be the last chance to resume talks before filling it for the second year in a row, Egypt said in a statement on Sunday.
The meeting will conclude on Monday in Kinshasa. Previous attempts to reach an agreement on the gigantic dam Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile have reached an impasse.
Ethiopia says the dam is key to its economic development and power generation. Egypt fears it will endanger its supplies of Nile water, while Sudan is concerned about the dam’s safety and regulating water flows through its own dams and water stations.
Ethiopia has said it will refill the reservoir behind the giant hydroelectric dam after the seasonal rains begin this summer, a move both Sudan and Egypt oppose.
“These negotiations represent the last chance the three countries must seize to reach an agreement … before the upcoming flood season,” Egypt’s foreign minister said in a statement.
Last week, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said there would be “unimaginable instability in the region” if Egypt’s water supply were affected by the dam.
Sudan is currently engaged in a tense border dispute with Ethiopia over the fertile al-Fashqa region, and on Saturday it completed joint military exercises with Egypt.
In a separate statement, Sudan said Ethiopia had increased the stakes in the negotiations by trying to reopen talks about the distribution of Nile water.
“I invite everyone to make a fresh start, to open one or more windows of hope,” said Felix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chairman of the African Union, who is the mediator for the negotiations.
Sudan welcomed a UAE initiative in March to mediate in both the dam talks and the border dispute, but has also recently called for the inclusion of the United Nations, the European Union and the United States as mediators.
Report by Nayera Abdallah in Cairo, Hereward Holland in Kinshasa and Khalid Abdelaziz in Khartoum, written by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by Hugh Lawson