KHARTOUM, April 4 (Xinhua) -- Delegations of Egypt and Ethiopia on Wednesday arrived in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to take part in a tripartite meeting regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Sudan's Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour and Sudan's Water Resources and Electricity Minister Mutaz Mussa received the Egyptian and Ethiopian delegations participating in the meeting.
The Egyptian delegation includes Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Abdel Atti and Acting Chief of General Intelligence Service Abbas Mustafa Kamel.
While the Ethiopian delegation includes Minister of Foreign Affairs Workneh Gebeyehu, Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, Sileshi Bekele, and Deputy Chief of Security and Intelligence.
The meeting is expected to review means to utilize the water resources and make the GERD a means of development in the three countries instead of a source of conflict and difference.
The meeting is held under decisions of the recent summit which brought together leaders of Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa late last January.
The last round of talks between the three countries on the Nile dam ended last November without reaching an agreement on a technical report prepared by French firms (BRL) and (Artelia) about the dam.
In late December 2017, Egypt proposed for the Ethiopian side to involve the World Bank as a neutral party in the activities of the tripartite technical committee, but Ethiopia refused the Egyptian proposal.
Egypt fears that the construction of the dam would affect its share in the Nile water, while Ethiopia reiterated that the dam is likely to make a shift in its wealth, namely in the field of electricity.
The GERD, extending on an area of 1,800 square km, is scheduled to be completed in three years at a cost of 4.7 billion U.S. dollars.
