KHARTOUM, (The Southern African Times) – Sudan on Monday renewed its rejection to unilateral filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) without reaching a legal and binding agreement, official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported.
Chairing a meeting of the Higher Committee for the GERD, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok noted the direct threat the unilateral filling and operating of the GERD poses to Sudan’s Roseires Dam, irrigation projects, power generating systems and citizens on the banks of the Blue Nile.
The meeting also renewed Sudan’s adherence to and belief in the principle of “African solutions to African problems.”
Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.
Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the African Union regarding the GERD issue. Ethiopia, however, has announced its rejection to this formula.
In February, Ethiopia said it would carry on with the second-phase 13.5-billion-cubic-meter filling of the GERD in June. The volume of the first-phase filling last year was 4.9 billion cubic meters.
Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources.
