Addis Ababa has announced that it will only deal with Egypt on issues of Nile water quotas through the Cooperative Framework Agreement, which was signed in May 2010 in Entebbe, Uganda.
The agreement, also knowns as the Entebbe Framework Agreement, was signed by five upstream states, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, but rejected at the time by both Sudan and Egypt.
“We have remained committed to the Nile Basin countries for the past 13 years,” said Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti. “This is the spirit of the Entebbe Agreement.”
Egyptian Minister of Water and Irrigation Hussein al-Atfy said recently Egypt has requested to see technical and environmental studies conducted for Ethiopia’s Great Millennium Dam, which it intends to build on its border with Sudan.
“We would ask the international community to intervene if Ethiopia does not reply,” he said.
In related news, al-Atfi appointed Hossam Fahmi as director of the Nile Water Department, to replace Abdel Fattah Metawe until a new director is chosen.
For his part, Hani Raslan, director of Nile water studies at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, warned of the consequences of the proposed Ethiopian dam. “It will have a reserve capacity of 62 billion cubic meters in four years,” he said.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
