Minister of Water Resources Mohamed Nasr el-Din Alam confirmed Sunday that Nile Basin countries “understood” that the five upstream states that signed the Entebbe draft framework agreement last month would face legal and institutional repercussions.
The agreement seeks to replace existing arrangements by which Egypt and Sudan are allowed full use of Nile water. According to Alam, the signatory states–Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda–unanimously agreed during the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) conference, currently underway in Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, to hold a special session to review said repercussions.
Ethiopian Irrigation Minister Asfaw Dingamo told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the meeting would be held in November in either Addis Ababa, Nairobi or Kenya to discuss outstanding points of contention between upstream and downstream states.
Egyptian officials participating in the Addis Ababa conference noted that Dingamo had privately met with Alam on the sidelines of the talks. They said that Alam had presented his counterpart with a number of proposals regarding the Entebbe framework agreement. According to one source, however, “it is clear these proposals were rejected.”
At a press conference held with other water ministers in attendance, Alam stressed that Egypt depended on the Nile to irrigate some nine billion acres of arable land, pointing out that the river constituted Egypt’s only source of water. Alam then noted that Ethiopia and Tanzania, unlike Egypt, possessed a multiplicity of alternative water sources.
Dingamo replied, saying, “If Egypt cares about the welfare of its people, then we too care about our people’s welfare.”
“All that we ask is that water be divided equitably,” the Ethiopian minister concluded.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
