The first meeting of the Permanent Joint Technical Commission for Nile water (PJTC) will meet for its 50th session today, said Egypt's Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Hussein al-Atify. The meeting will be held in the commission's building in Khartoum. It will last for five days and will be headed by Kamal Ali, Sudan's Minister of Irrigation. The meeting comes at the beginning of a new session to discuss both countries' opinions and points of view concerning Nile Basin issues. The chairman of the Nile sector and head of Egypt's delegation, Hisham Kandeel, said the commission is one of the conditions of the 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan, intended to achieve bilateral cooperation and coordination not only on the level of water resources and the Nile basin, but also on the level of study and research to increase the amount of Nile water. A member of the Egyptian delegation said the results of the annual business of the Egyptian irrigation administration in Sudan will be viewed during the meetings. The irrigation administration does the field monitoring of water levels in the blue and white Nile. He also said the commission supervises the execution of projects scheduled by both countries' governments. It also monitors all operating systems of the projects in Sudan and the systems of the Aswan low and high dams, according to agreements between Egypt, Sudan and the other Nile basin countries. The commission will discuss 15 of its constant items and will review whether the decisions and recommendations of the previous meetings were executed or not. It will also view the achievements of the technical cooperation projects and the water development in south of Sudan.
