Egypt’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Ethiopian Chargé d’Affairs to Cairo, to provide clarifications regarding the statements of the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson in which he commented on Egyptian internal affairs.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Dina Mufti said that South Africa, which chairs the African Union, had invited Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to a meeting on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam next Sunday.
During the weekly press conference of the ministry, Mufti indicated that the meeting comes after a month-long break, due to Khartoum’s demand to change the negotiation methodology.
Mufti added that the meeting was a race against time, as the next presidency of the African Union for 2021 will be transferred to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Sudanese government announced an agreement with Ethiopia to resume negotiations on the Renaissance Dam, after Khartoum boycotted the negotiation sessions due to what it considered reliance on an “old approach”.
It also called for a greater role for experts to contribute to resolving the dilemma between Cairo, Addis Ababa and Khartoum.
Egypt announced that it will continue negotiations regarding the GERD, as long as official observers have an effective role in the negotiation process, professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University Abbas Sharaqi said on December 16.
During a phone interview with journalist Amr Abdel Hamid on Egypt’s TeN satellite channel, Sharaqi added that Sudan has confirmed that the dam, which is just 15 kilometers away, poses a flood threat to the country.
