KHARTOUM, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) -- A tripartite committee
of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will select in early
March an international consultative office to be entrusted with
preparing all hydrologic and environmental studies on the controversial
dam, said Egypt's Minister of Irrigation Hossam Moghazi on Saturday.
"The
12 experts of the three countries, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, will
begin, as of Sunday, studying and evaluating the offers presented by
four consultative offices," Moghazi, who is currently visiting Khartoum,
told Xinhua.
He added that the name of the
selected office will be announced in a meeting to be held in Khartoum by
the end of the first week of March.
He said that
the committee would then meet in Addis Ababa, Ehtiopia, to sign a
contract with the winning office so that it would begin to implement the
required studies on the dam and its impacts, stressing the three
countries's commitment to respecting the results.
Meanwhile,
the Egyptian minister reiterated that the differences between his
country and Ethiopia over the dam have vanished, thanks to an approved
roadmap which bridged the gap between the two sides.
He
further stressed the importance of the joint work by the three
countries to achieve unity among the eastern Nile Basin countries.
"It
is important to work together. It is true that the issue is thorny and
complicated and directly associated with a destiny of around 250 million
people in the three countries, but there must be a joint work," he
said.
He went on saying that each country has its own concerns over the dam.
Ethiopia
is concerned with the electricity generation, Egypt with the water
deficiency and Sudan with the floods danger management, he pointed out,
stressing that cooperation can address all these issues.
The
GERD extends on an area of 1,800 square km and is scheduled to be
completed in a period of three years at a cost of about 4.7 billion U.S.
dollars. So far, around 30 percent of the dam project has been
finalized.
In the meantime, Khartoum on Saturday
hosted an unofficial meeting for the water and irrigation ministers of
the Nile Basin Initiative's.
The meeting was
attended by all members of the Nile Basin Initiative, the first time
since 2010 when Entebbe Agreement was signed before it was followed by
differences between the Nile upstream countries and the two downstream
countries of Sudan and Egypt.
"Egypt is keen to
strengthen the Nile Basin Initiative as it is one of the founders. After
all these years, we have decided to participate after realizing the
initiative is facing financial problems and the donor countries set the
consensus among the basin countries as a condition to provide fund," the
Egyptian minister noted.
Meanwhile, he refused to comment on the possibility that Egypt would join Entebbe Agreement.
The
Nile Basin Initiative brings together Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan,
Uganda, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Tanzania,
Rwanda, Kenya and Eritrea.
Source: globalpost.com/dispatch/news
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