Sudan's Foreign Minister Mariam Al-Saddiq Al-Mahdi expressed on Thursday her country's keenness to enhance cooperation with Egypt, saying Khartoum's relations with Cairo are strategic to security in the region. "My first trip was to South Sudan, my second was to Egypt," said Al-Mahdi as she addressed policy experts and journalists at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies (ACPSS) in Cairo. Al-Mahdi said that Sudan's relations with Egypt are "of strategic importance to the security of the region," adding that both states share African and Islamic identities and are part of the Nile Basin group of states and the international community. She also called for establishing an Egyptian-Sudanese dialogue on how to develop relations between the two states in the future. On Tuesday, Al-Mahdi met her Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry, where the latter said that Egypt supports Sudan's recent suggestion regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) negotiations. Sudan recently called for international mediation in the stalled GERD talks, involving a quartet committee composed of the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and the United States, in order to reach a legally binding agreement with Ethiopia on the filling and operation of the dam. “The second filling of the GERD endangers the lives of 20 million Sudanese citizens,” the Sudanese minister said. Al-Mahdi said that both Egypt and Sudan are committed to reaching a legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of the dam before the second filling. Last month, the daughter of Sudan's former premier and Al-Umma Party leader Saddiq Al-Mahdi, was appointed as top diplomat in Abdallah Hamdok's new cabinet. Shoukry congratulated her at the time for becoming Khartoum's new prime minister in a phone call and invited her to visit Cairo at the earliest opportunity.
