WASHINGTON: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Wednesday sought US help in pressing Ethiopia into an agreement on a mega-dam that the parched Arab country sees as an existential threat.
Visiting Washington for a US-Africa summit, El-Sisi raised the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met a day earlier with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
“This is a very vital and existential matter to us. And we thank the United States for its support and its attention,” El-Sisi told Blinken.
“Reaching a legally binding agreement can achieve something good in accordance with international standards and norms. We are not asking for anything other than that,” he said.
“We need your support on this matter.”
Blinken in the meeting “emphasized the importance of a diplomatic resolution” on the dam “that would safeguard the interests of all parties,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
Blinken also raised human rights, acknowledging recent releases of political prisoners but calling for “further progress to advance human rights and fundamental freedoms,” Price said.
The massive $4.2 billion dam on the Nile, set to be the largest in Africa, has been the source of intense friction between Ethiopia and Egypt as well as Sudan.
Egypt, which relies on the river for 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water, fears that the dam will reduce its already scarce supply of water.
Abiy has promised to continue talks on the dam but has also gone ahead both with filling and operating the initial turbines.
The previous US administration of Donald Trump, a close ally of army chief turned president El-Sisi, sought to negotiate a solution and cut off aid to Ethiopia after accusing Addis Ababa of failing to engage in good faith.
Trump, while in the White House, made waves by suggesting Egypt could attack the dam, a possibility publicly dismissed by Cairo.
President Joe Biden’s administration has taken a lower-key approach, favoring diplomacy but not linking aid to the issue.
But Biden’s relations soured with Ethiopia over unrelated concerns of rights abuses in an offensive against rebels in the Tigray region, which has come to a halt after a deal last month.
Biden took office seeking a greater distance from El-Sisi over domestic rights concerns but he has welcomed his role in brokering a cease-fire last year in the Gaza Strip and in hosting last month’s UN climate summit.
Egypt seeks US help in reviving Ethiopia dam deal
https://arab.news/pn5q2
Egypt seeks US help in reviving Ethiopia dam deal
- Abdel Fattah El-Sisi raises the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
