CAIRO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th June, 2020) Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have agreed to form a technical committee that will work out a final agreement on the long-contested dam on Blue Nile, and Addis Ababa has committed to avoid filling the dam until the document is ready, Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said on Saturday.
On Friday, the three countries discussed the dam construction at a virtual summit that also included representatives of the African Union, South Africa, Kenya, Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"At the end of the summit, the parties agreed to form an intergovernmental committee consisting of technical and legal experts from Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt, as well as the above listed African Union member countries and representatives of international observer organizations, in order to work out a final document, legally binding for all parties, in particular with regard to dam filling," Rady said in a statement, obtained by Sputnik.
The spokesman said the parties had agreed to avoid taking unilateral measures, including "to refrain from filling the dam until the agreement on it is reached."
According to the statement, the countries will send the summit minutes to the UN Security Council for consideration before the session on Monday where the dam is going to be discussed.
The dam, officially known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, is under construction by Ethiopia and set to become Africa's largest, but Egypt and Sudan fear its effects on their own water security. The three countries have held dozens of rounds of talks but have failed to agree on how soon the dam should be filled.
Cairo has proposed to extend the filling for 10 years, while Ethiopia is determined to do it in three years. In this case, Egypt and Sudan say they will fall short of 25 billion cubic meters of water annually with subsequent drought and crop failure.
Last week, Egypt officially asked the UN Security Council to intervene in talks and prevent Addis Ababa from acting unilaterally amid stalled progress in the trilateral dialogue.
