Egypt and Sudan have agreed to hold extensive negotiations with the upstream countries in the Nile Basin, with a view to signing a new cooperative agreement on Nile water quotas.
The two countries also said they would not sign the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) that was signed by some Nile Basin countries last year.
“The agreement does not recognize Egypt and Sudan’s quotas,” said Sudanese Irrigation Minister Kamal Ali.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry requested that is should handle the Nile water file, which had been withdrawn from it and assigned to the Ministry of Irrigation.
“It’s a political file,” said Mona Omar, assistant foreign minister for African affairs, adding that relations with African countries have been adversely affected since former President Hosni Mubarak stopped visiting them in 1995.
For his part, former Irrigation Minister Nasr Eddin Allam, in a memo to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, warned of the dams that Ethiopia is building, and called for a review of Egyptian investment projects in Nile Basin countries, contending that they had failed to make Ethiopia change its position on CFA.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
