Egyptian FM, UN Chief Discuss Ethiopia's Nile Dam Dispute

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held on Tuesday a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to discuss the latest developments of the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) built on the Nile River

CAIRO, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Apr, 2021 ) :Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held on Tuesday a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to discuss the latest developments of the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) built on the Nile River.

Shoukry explained how Ethiopia's unilateral decision to carry out the second filling of the GERD without reaching a tripartite legally binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan "would impact the stability and the security of the region," the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Shoukry has previously sent letters to the UN, the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly regarding the dispute over the GERD, according to the statement.

The Egyptian top diplomat highlighted the importance of the role of the UN and its agencies in contributing to resuming the negotiations by Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, in a bid to reach an agreement on the rules of filling and operating the dam.

Ethiopia, an upstream Nile basin country, carried out the first phase of filling the dam in July 2020 and is planning to go ahead with the second phase in July this year despite the concerns of Egypt and Sudan, which have repeatedly called for reaching a tripartite agreement.

A week ago, the tripartite GERD talks sponsored by the African Union (AU) in Kinshasa, the capital of Democratic Republic of the Congo, failed to reach an agreement. Both Egypt and Sudan have blamed Ethiopia for the deadlock.

Ethiopia started building the GERD in 2011, while Egypt is concerned it might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the Nile water. Sudan has recently been raising similar concerns over the dam.

Over the past few years, the tripartite talks on the rules of filling and operating the giant hydro-power dam, whose total capacity is 74 billion cubic meters, have been fruitless, including those hosted earlier by Washington and the recent ones by the AU.