Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan to finalize Blue Nile dam agreement this month1

[Deeq A.]

WASHINGTON: Ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have agreed to reconvene in Washington later this month to finalize an agreement on a giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile that sparked a diplomatic crisis between Cairo and Addis Ababa.
The ministers met in Washington this week and agreed to fill the $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in stages during the wet season, taking into account the impact on downstream reservoirs, the US Treasury Department, which hosted the meeting, said in a statement.
They will meet again in Washington on Jan. 28-29 to finalize the agreement with technical and legal discussions, the statement said.
Cairo fears the dam, announced in 2011 and under construction on the Blue Nile near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, will restrict supplies of already scarce Nile waters on which its population of more than 100 million people is almost entirely dependent.
Addis Ababa denies the dam will undermine Egypt’s access to water and says the project is crucial to its economic development, as it aims to become Africa’s biggest power exporter with a projected capacity of more than 6,000 megawatts.
The three regional powers convened in Washington for the third time on Monday, aiming to reach a deal before Wednesday’s deadline the nations had agreed to following a November meeting with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and World Bank President David Malpass.

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