Doaa El-Bey examines what might lie behind the political pleasantries exchanged this week between Egypt and Ethiopia Egypt's Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his Ethiopian counterpart Meles Zenawi highlighted the positive impact of their talks this week on relations between Cairo and Addis Ababa, using win-win phrases and depicting the River Nile as a bridge rather than a barrier to warm ties. During the visit Zenawi announced a delay in the ratification of the controversial Nile Water Agreement to allow Egypt time to study its provisions. The two top officials also agreed that a technical team comprising Egyptians, Ethiopians and Sudanese should review the impact of the $4.8-billion Millennium Dam which Addis Ababa is proposing to build on the Blue Nile. Former minister of irrigation Mahmoud Abu Zeid hailed the meeting as signalling a new era of cooperation started with Ethiopia and said he looked forward to improved relations with other Nile Basin states. Abu Zeid was optimistic that meetings with leaders of other Nile Basin states would soon follow. He pointed out that Minister of Irrigation Hisham Qandil visited Southern Sudan yesterday to secure the future of cooperation between the two states and the possibility of building a dam in Southern Sudan. A meeting between Nile Basin ministers of irrigation to examine the legal implications of signing the new water treaty is due to be held in mid-October in Burundi. "Pending issues raised by Egypt and Sudan -- namely fixing Egyptian and Sudanese water quotas and the principle of prior notification -- are expected to be resolved during the Burundi meeting," Abu Zeid told Al-Ahram Weekly. Maghawri Shehata, president of the Arab Association for Healthy Water, said that Zenawi's visit was an example of Ethiopia's ongoing desire to promote cooperation with Egypt. While he expressed the hope that any improvement in relations would be positively reflected in Nile water issues Shehata stresses that Ethiopia postponed ratification of the agreement to give Egypt time to study it. Addis Ababa has not indicated any change in its own position. "Ethiopia began work on the foundations of the dam even before Burundi had signed the agreement," he told the Weekly. Nor does Shehata pin much hope on the work of the technical team which, he says, may be mandated to examine the impacts of building the dam but there has been no mention of what might happen should those impacts be negative on downstream states. Zenawi also met with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's military ruler. The visit resulted in the signing of six cooperation agreements covering educational issues, agriculture, aquaculture, capacity building, training, and ways to avoid double taxation. Egyptian investments in Ethiopia currently stand at $2 billion, a figure officials hope will more than double in the next few years. Tensions flared between Egypt and Sudan on the one hand, and Ethiopia and the other Nile Basin states on the other, when Ethiopia, along with Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya, signed a pact on Nile water in the Ugandan capital Entebbe in May last year. The five signatories gave other Nile Basin countries a year to join the pact before putting it into action. Sudan and Egypt have dismissed the new deal while Congo and Burundi initially refused to sign. Burundi later signed. The new Nile Water Agreement is intended to replace the 1929 agreement which gave Egypt the right to most of the 100 billion cubic metres of water that annually reach the Nile's downstream countries. The agreement, which Great Britain negotiated on behalf of its then African colonies, also gave Egypt and Sudan the right to veto any dams being build upstream. In March Ethiopia announced the construction of the Renaissance Dam, planned to be the continent's largest hydroelectric plant. Although relations between Cairo and other Nile Basin capitals began to thaw after the collapse of the Mubarak regime, the real breakthrough came when a popular diplomacy delegation visited Ethiopia and Uganda.
