Al-Ahram honours High dam Russian engineers

Al-Ahram institution honours Russian as well Egyptian engineers who participated in the construction of the High Dam in Aswan as part of Egypt's jubilee celebration

Al-Ahram honoured Russian and Egyptian engineers who participated in the construction of Egypt's Aswan High Dam in a ceremony Monday afternoon.
The ceremony comes as part of the Nile diversion in Egypt's jubilee celebration. On 14 May 1964, then president Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev marked the first stage of construction of the High Dam of Aswan by diverting the course of the Nile River.
The 15-member delegation flew from Moscow on Saturday to take part in a number of events planned in the coming few days including a celebration organized by the Society of the Graduates of Russian and Soviet Universities, at the Egyptian Opera House in central Cairo.
The celebration,hosted by Al-Ahram,was attended by its CEO, Dr. Ahmed El-Sayid El-Naggar, Russian Ambassador to Cairo Serge Kirpichenko, prominent journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, former housing minister Hassaballah El-Kafrawy and current irrigation minister Mohamed Abdel El-Motleb.
Eighty-two-year-old Vadim Radtechenko, told Al-Ahram's Arabic newspaperhe arrived to Cairo 55 years ago, on exactly 25 November 1959. He was among the first of the Soviet delegation, constituting of ten engineers, arriving to work on the first phase of the dam.
The day following his arrival, Radtechenko met with Egypt's president at the time Gamal Abdel-Nasser in Cairo University's Engineering department.
Abdel-Nasser was very excited while talking about the future, Radtechenko recalled.
Radtechenko also recalled a noteworthy fact about his stay in Egypt, two months into his time there, his father was delegated by the Soviet government to travel to Egypt and work as head of the engineers. Radtechenko worked for two years in Egypt, ultimately leaving with a valued picture of him and the Egyptian president. His father stayed on for six years, earning an order of merit first class from the late president.
Vadim Radtechenko is currently the vice-president of the non-governmental International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD).
President Nasser's children Abdel Hakim, Hoda and Mona Abdel Nasser also attended the celebration among other public figures.
The celebration included the screening of a short documentary produced by Al-Ahram Archives showing press coverage ofthe dam's construction process in Al-Ahram's daily newspaper along with a segment of president Nasser's speech during the Nile diversion process in 1964.
In his speech during the celebration, El-Naggar said the Aswan High Dam was considered the biggest project of the 20th century and that Egypt did not harm any other downstream country it constructed the dam. He added that this is contrary to upstream countries whose water share was impacted, a reference to the current crisis between Egypt and Ethiopia.
Russian Ambassador to Cairo Serge Kirpichenko expressed his respect for the Egyptian people and praised the cooperation between Egypt and Russia describing president Nasser as the one and only leader of Egypt.
The Russian engineers of the High Dam came along with the Russian popular initiative delegation currently visiting Cairo.
The Soviet Union aided Egypt financially and technically in constructing the High Dam after the World Bank rejected to finance the project.
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