Egyptian officials visited the site of Ethiopia's planned Renaissance Dam this week and met with Ethiopian officials. Minister of Irrigation Hossam Al-Moghazi described the trip as an important confidence-building measure. For the first time, Egyptian experts have been given access to the dam's specifications. The minister said the designs would be carefully studied. “The present situation is as we expected. Water storage will not start for two years. Only 15 per cent of the dam has been built, meaning that electricity generation will not start before 2017,” the minister said in a phone interview with Egyptian TV after the visit. However, Nader Noureddin, a professor of agricultural resources at Cairo University, said that the timing of Al-Moghazi's visit was not appropriate, given the controversy that still surrounds the dam. “Why should there be an official visit to a dam that Egypt has not agreed to?” Noureddin asked. “Ethiopia can now claim that according to international law it allowed Egyptian officials to visit the site and check that the dam will not harm the country.” He continued, “Judging from the last rounds of negotiations, it is obvious that Addis Ababa is directing the negotiations to wherever it wants them to go: choosing the places for the negotiations to be held, the number of foreign experts, when to give Egypt the design of the dam, etc. This is not a good sign.” Mustafa Al-Guindi, coordinator of the popular diplomacy delegation that visited Uganda and Ethiopia in 2011, said that the problem is bigger than just a difference between Ethiopia and Egypt. “Today, Ethiopia wants to build a dam. Tomorrow, another Nile Basin country may want to build a dam. The Nile Basin countries need to sit down together as a whole and work out a way to deal with issues related to the Nile Basin in its entirety,” he said. Al-Moghazi visited the dam site on Sunday and headed the Egyptian delegation at a meeting later in the week with the ministers of irrigation of Sudan and Ethiopia in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. He said that the visit had been made for “technical and consultative reasons” and had not been political in intention. The minister also took part in the first meeting of the international committee set up to review the dam. The committee includes 12 experts: four from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. It will review studies conducted on the dam and choose international consultants to deal with any technical problems. He said that the committee is expected to work for six months. If committee members fail to agree, differences will be referred to international arbitration. If the international decision is unacceptable to the parties, their differences will be submitted for a further round of international arbitration. “Each step will take six months. Ethiopia has insisted that only one international expert should assess the dam, whereas in similar cases the parties have referred the issue to at least four experts in construction, the environment, water resources and geology in order to produce a thorough report on such issues,” Al-Moghazi said. The committee was formed following the fourth tripartite meeting on the dam held in Khartoum last month. At the meeting, the three countries decided that a six-month period was necessary to thoroughly assess the impact of the dam and agreed to the formation of the committee to review the findings. The third round of tripartite talks, held in January, ended without agreement being reached. The first and second rounds, held in November and December 2013, failed even to identify points that needed to be discussed. The fourth round of talks followed a meeting between Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Malabo, GuineaBissau, in June. Al-Sisi said he had received commitments from Desalegn that the dam, during its construction and subsequent operation, will not have a negative impact on Egypt's share of Nile water. Following the meeting, Egypt and Ethiopia announced that a joint committee will be established to streamline negotiations. Ethiopia acknowledged the central importance of the Nile to Egypt, while Egypt acknowledged Ethiopia's right to pursue development projects and both parties committed themselves to the principles enshrined in international law. As the meetings and mediation efforts continued, Al-Guindi suggested an alternative way to resolve the differences among the Nile Basin countries. The Nile Basin countries signed the Entebbe Agreement in 2010, he explained, and these same states, this time with the addition of Egypt and Sudan, could work out a way of resolving their differences in a way that protected their “right to live.” “Instead of talking about our historic rights to Nile water, Egypt could focus on its ‘right to live' instead. Egypt and all the Nile Basin countries have basic rights to clean water to drink, enough water to plant their crops, and water to provide electricity needs,” he said, adding that this could provide the starting point for negotiation. He suggested that a permanent tripartite committee be formed that would consist of an Egyptian representative, an international representative, and a representative, on a rotating basis, of the Nile Basin states. The committee would be able to veto any project that contradicted the interests of one or more Nile Basin states and it would be able to suggest alternatives. “I suggested this to the Tanzanian and Ugandan presidents, and they accepted it. The Congolese president is likely to accept it too,” Al-Guindi said. The dam is likely to be further discussed during this week's 69th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, during which Al-Sisi will meet again with Desalegn. Al-Sisi is also expected to visit Addis Ababa before the end of the year, having received an invitation during the Malabo summit. Ethiopia is the source of 85 per cent of the Nile's water, and Egypt has repeatedly expressed its concern that the Renaissance Dam project, which Ethiopia intends to build on the Blue Nile, could diminish the river's flow and reduce the amount of water that reaches the country. Addis Ababa has repeatedly claimed that it will not. A 1959 agreement gives Egypt and Sudan the lion's share of the Nile's water, 55.5 billion cubic metres and 18 billion cubic metres, respectively, and the right to veto any projects built along the river. Ethiopia, together with other Nile Basin states, is seeking to replace the 1959 agreement with the Entebbe Agreement, which Addis Ababa claims provides for a fairer distribution of water. Cairo and Khartoum have both refused to sign the Entebbe Agreement. South Sudan signed in April 2013, leaving Congo as the only upstream country that has yet to sign. A tripartite technical committee including Egyptian, Ethiopian, Sudanese and international experts began its assessment of the impact of the Renaissance Dam project on Sudan and Egypt in 2011. The committee's final report, issued last year, said that preliminary studies conducted on the dam's impact were insufficient to justify construction and more studies were needed. Ethiopia's foreign minister was also scheduled to visit Cairo last July, but the trip was cancelled in the wake of the removal of former president Mohamed Morsi.
