Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan have entered a new round of talks mediated by the African Union over the use of water running through the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), located on the Blue Nile River. The three days of talks in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, began on Saturday.
The Blue Nile is the main tributary of the Nile River, which provides Egypt with about 90 percent of its water needs. Sudan and Egypt fear unchecked filling of the massive dam will cause either severe droughts or flooding in in some of the areas of their countries.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi threatened last week that denying Egypt “one drop of water” will lead to “unimaginable instability in the region.”
Cairo and Khartoum have called for a legally binding pact regarding filling and operation procedures backed by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, while Addis Ababa insists on general guidelines only.