Sudan's Irrigation and Water Resources Minister Yasser Abbas met on Tuesday in Khartoum with Ethiopian counterpart Seleshi Bekele, where they agreed to resume the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) talks between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia soon, Sudanese news agency SUNA reported. According to SUNA, Abbas and Bekele discussed ways to resume the talks, which had reached another deadlock in November. Both ministers agreed to resume the talks soon, without going into specifics. They also agreed to give the African Union experts a bigger role to bridge the gap between the three countries with consultations from the AU chairman and secretariat. The GERD talks reached to deadlock in November after Sudan decided to not to take part in a tripartite ministerial meeting that was scheduled to discuss guidelines for further negotiations, saying that the way previous talks were held proved to be "unproductive." Egypt and Sudan have insisted that the three countries sign a binding legal agreement on disputed issues surrounding the GERD to safeguard the interests of all three parties, a demand that has been repeatedly dodged by Addis Ababa over the last several years.
