Ethiopia says it has started the next phase of filling a controversial mega-dam on the Nile River, Egyptian authorities said on Monday, raising tensions ahead of an UN Security Council meeting tomorrow on the issue.
Egypt said the move was “a violation of international laws and norms that regulate projects built on the shared basins of international rivers,” and had expressed its “firm rejection of this unilateral measure,” the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation said in a statement.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is set to be Africa’s largest hydroelectric project when completed, is the source of an almost decade-long diplomatic standoff between Addis Ababa and downstream nations Egypt and Sudan.
Photo: AFP
Ethiopia says the project is essential to its development, but Cairo and Khartoum fear it could restrict their citizens’ water access.
Both countries have been pushing Addis Ababa to ink a binding deal over the filling and operation of the dam, and have in the past few weeks been urging the UN Security Council to take up the matter.
Tomorrow’s meeting was requested by Tunisia on Egypt and Sudan’s behalf, a diplomatic source said.
However, French Ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Riviere last week said the council itself can do little apart from bringing the sides together.
Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry said in one note to the UN that negotiations are at an impasse, and accused Ethiopia of adopting “a policy of intransigence that undermined our collective endeavors to reach an agreement.”
Addis Ababa had previously announced it would proceed to the second stage of filling this month, with or without a deal.
The Nile — which at about 6,000km is one of the longest rivers in the world — is an essential source of water and electricity for dozens of countries in East Africa.
Egypt, which depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water, sees the dam as an existential threat.
Sudan hopes the project will regulate annual flooding, but fears its dams would be harmed without agreement on the Ethiopian operation.
The 145m mega-dam, which began construction in 2011, has a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters.
Filling began last year, with Ethiopia announcing in July last year it had hit its target of 4.9 billion cubic meters — enough to test the dam’s first two turbines, an important milestone on the way toward actually producing energy.
The goal is to impound an additional 13.5 billion cubic meters this year.
Egypt and Sudan wanted a trilateral agreement on the dam’s operations to be reached before any filling began.
However, Ethiopia says it is a natural part of the construction, and is thus impossible to postpone.
Last year, Sudan said the process caused water shortages, including in Khartoum, a claim Ethiopia disputed.
Sudanese Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Yasser Abbas in April said that if Ethiopia went ahead with the second stage filling, Sudan “would file lawsuits against the Italian company constructing the dam and the Ethiopian government.”
He said the lawsuits would highlight that the “environmental and social impact as well as the dangers of the dam” have not been taken into adequate consideration.
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