KHARTOUM: Sudan is open to a partial interim agreement on Ethiopia’s multi-billion-dollar dam on the Blue Nile, with specific conditions, Irrigation Minister Yasir Abbas said on Monday.
While Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Egypt fears it will imperil its water supply and Sudan is concerned about the impact on its own water flows.
Sudan and Egypt agreed last week to coordinate efforts to push Ethiopia to negotiate “seriously” on an agreement on filling and operating the GERD.
Cairo and Khartoum had been aligned on the need for any agreement to be comprehensive, but Abbas’s comments mark a potential shift in Sudan’s position.
” conditions include the signing-off of everything that has already been agreed on in negotiations, ... provisions to ensure that the talks continue even after the filling scheduled for July, and the negotiations adhering to a definite timetable,” Abbas told a news conference, citing a time crunch.
Ethiopia has said it will begin a second filling of the reservoir behind the dam during the rainy season this summer.
Talks overseen by the African Union, aimed at reaching a binding agreement, have repeatedly stalled.
Sudan says it is open to conditional interim deal on Ethiopia dam
https://arab.news/vf2sc
Sudan says it is open to conditional interim deal on Ethiopia dam
- Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
- Sudan and Egypt agreed last week to coordinate efforts to push Ethiopia to negotiate "seriously"
Israeli military says unintentionally struck UN agency truck in Gaza
- “Our teams are taking extraordinary risks every day to keep humanitarian operations and life-sustaining services running,” UNOPS Executive Director Jorge Moreira da Silva said in a statement, calling for an investigation into the incident
TEL AVIV: Israel’s military said on Friday that a “firing component” launched by its navy unintentionally struck a fuel truck belonging to a United Nations agency in Gaza the previous day, an incident that prompted the agency to publicly call for a full investigation.
The United Nations Office for Project Services, which oversees fuel distribution in Gaza, said that the empty fuel truck was struck on Thursday around 5 a.m. from the direction of the sea, causing damage to the vehicle. There were no injuries.
“Our teams are taking extraordinary risks every day to keep humanitarian operations and life-sustaining services running,” UNOPS Executive Director Jorge Moreira da Silva said in a statement, calling for an investigation into the incident.
“They should not have to do that under fire,” he said.
In response to Reuters questions, the Israeli military said that the incident occurred during defensive naval activity, and that a firing component deviated from its intended trajectory.
The fuel truck sustained “minor damage,” the military said in a statement. The military did not say what type of munitions had been fired, or what had been the navy’s intended target.
“The incident was reviewed, and lessons were learned accordingly,” it said, without providing further details.
The fuel truck had been on its way to the Kerem Shalom crossing when it was struck, and the truck’s movements had been coordinated with Israeli authorities in advance, UNOPS said.
