CAIRO: When the ministers and officials from the 9 Nile Basin Initiative nations left Alexandria late July after a failed conference that saw Egypt continue to remain unwilling to compromise over water-sharing deals, it appeared time would be needed to secure a new agreement. However, Ethiopia has announced that the countries, including Egypt, have agreed on most points of a package on fair and equitable uses of the Nile River. Egypt still has a number of reservations over the deal and no public statements have been made by Egyptian officials over a proposed change to the NBI's structure. Egypt and Sudan have objected to one of the proposed articles in the package deal, said Ethiopian Minister of Water Resource Asfaw Dingamo in comments to reporters. Asfaw said at a news conference in Addis Ababa that the package has 39 articles and 66 sub-articles, adding that the meeting was successful in protecting Ethiopia's interest. Though seven riparian countries of NBI agreed on all of the articles of the package, Egypt and Sudan objected one of the articles on the security of water, he said. Cairo refused to sign onto the convention without assurances by other members that the country would not lose the 55.5 billion cubic meters of Nile water they are allowed to use and demanded a veto power over any projects implemented upstream in southern Nile nations. The NBI was established in 1999 by the water ministers of Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to “achieve sustainable socioeconomic development through the equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.†Egypt’s water ministry is unwilling to enter an agreement that would limit their water use, as it is expected that the country will need to increase the amount of water taken from the Nile in the coming years. In Alexandria, similar to the NBI conference in Kinshasa less than two months ago, a deal could not be reached and the culprit appears to have been Egypt, which is opposed to any amendments to past Nile agreements. It’s Water and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Nasr El Din Allam said “there is enough water to go around,†highlighting Egypt’s position that changes do not need to be made. If Ethiopia's statements are correct, the NBI may have had its first breakthrough in its decade of existence. BM
