Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mahmoud Abou Zeid said the World Bank president has agreed to tour the Nile region to meet the presidents and prime ministers of its countries. He will try to broker a solution to the last controversial point regarding the legal and institutional framework of the new cooperation agreement between Nile Basin countries. This dispute revolves over how to insert the old agreements, struck among these countries during colonialism, into the new one. Abou Zeid said the tour would take place in the second half of January and pointed out that the Congolese water minister, as current chairman of the council of water ministers of this particular region, would go on a parallel tour with the other ministers to arrange the meetings of the next ministerial council and discuss ways to cooperate. Abou Zeid talked yesterday about the results of the ground survey carried out by a confidence-building project - part of the Nile Basin Initiative - and aimed at finding out how aware people in this region were of the activities and projects of this initiative. He said the results show that Nile Basin peoples and capitals are more aware of the nature and goals of this initiative and of the importance of cooperation among their countries. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has declared that Egypt would take part in the ministerial meeting of the international conference on the situation in the African Great Lakes region. This meeting was supposed to be held in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on December 14 and 15, but, due to the situation in the east of the country, it has been postponed to tomorrow in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the meeting aims at paving the way for the expected meeting of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) in the first quarter of 2009. Ministry official spokesman Hissam Zaki said the meeting would discuss several important issues, such as the latest developments in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the peace process in Burundi as well as peace, security and development in the African Great Lakes countries. Speaking to the press yesterday, he said Assistant Foreign Minister for Africa and the African Union Mona Omar would lead the Egyptian delegation taking part in the meeting and would deliver messages from Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit to his counterparts in the Great Lakes region. These messages include Egypt's vision of the crisis developments and dimensions in the framework of the continuous consultations and coordination among the region's countries.
