The Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy, Seleshi Bekele, offered Egypt and Sudan to select and nominate dam operators for data exchange before the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in the next rainy season.
The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry issued a statement which confirmed that Bekele had written official letters to Egypt and Sudan about this.
According to the statement, the Ethiopian Minister of Irrigation said that his country had made remarkable progress in building the dam with the approaching rainy season. It is scheduled to be filled in July and August, and the filling may continue in September.
This comes a week after the Ethiopian Minister of Irrigation announced redoubled efforts by Addis Ababa to start generating electricity from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam next August. This is after the success of the second filling process, which Ethiopia insists on proceeding with despite the lack of an agreement, ignoring the two downstream countries’ warnings. This offer comes after Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and the Sudanese Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Yasser Abbas announced that all options are open to deal with the dam crisis in two separate identical statements.
Egypt and Sudan want to reach a tripartite agreement on operating the dam before filling it. On the other hand, Ethiopia believes that this process is an integral part of its construction and cannot be postponed. For his part, the Sudanese Minister of Irrigation said that his country had taken measures to cope with the possibility of water shortages with the second filling of the Renaissance Dam, including storing one billion cubic metres of water in the Roseires Dam.
The Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maryam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi, ruled out a military option to solve the crisis and at a press conference in Qatar said, ‘we are now talking about political possibilities.’
A week ago, Al-Sisi reiterated his warning against compromising the Nile’s waters, stressing that all options are open in case Egypt’s water is damaged. He warned of the consequences of entering into a confrontation, stressing that cooperation and agreement are much better than anything else, despite the failure of last week’s negotiations in Kinshasa.
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