KHARTOUM, March 31 (Xinhua) — Sudanese government on Wednesday warned of the danger of Ethiopia’s implementation of the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mariam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi reviewed with U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan Donald Booth the development of the situations regarding the GERD issue, said the ministry’s statement.
The Sudanese foreign minister urged the United States to embark on constructive negotiation that commits the Ethiopian side not to fill the GERD without consent of the concerning parties, according to the statement.
“The unilateral actions of the Ethiopian side have undermined mutual trust between the two countries,” Al-Mahdi was quoted in the statement as saying.
“Sudan has resorted to the mediation quartet after learning that Ethiopia was eluding to buy time to complete the process of the second filling of the dam, which should not be tolerated,” she noted.
Booth, for his part, stressed the importance of reaching a binding and satisfactory agreement for all parties on the GERD issue, according to the statement.
Booth further said that the United States can provide necessary technical support for the file to get out of this crisis with satisfactory positions for all parties, it added.
Earlier, Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the U.S. and the African Union regarding the GERD issue.
Ethiopia officially announced its decision to reject the mediation quartet.
In February, Ethiopia said it would carry on with the second-phase 13.5-billion-cubic-meter filling of the GERD in June. The volume of the first-phase filling last year was 4.9 billion cubic meters.
Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.
Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources.
