Egypt’s Irrigation and Water Resources Ministry said Sunday that a meeting in Khartoum with Ethiopian and Sudanese officials to discuss the controversial Renaissance Dam was postponed.
The meeting, called off from Tuesday to Saturday or Sunday, was meant to settle the advisory body which the three countries had agreed to entrust with technical studies of the undertaking, according to the ministry’s adviser, Alaa Yassin.
In press statements on Sunday, Yassin said Addis Ababa had requested the postponement while it prepares for April's parliamentary elections.
Egypt and Sudan had feared that the power-generating dam would affect their historical water shares agreed upon in an accord both signed in 1959, while Ethiopia frequently reassures them the dam will have no negative impact.
Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed an agreement a week ago which set principles of cooperation in motion on the Nile River dispute, which observers said amounted to an official Egyptian recognition of the dam.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
