New round of talks on Ethiopia's Nile dam opens in Khartoum

KHARTOUM, April 5 (Xinhua) -- A new round of talks on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) kicked off Thursday with participation of senior officials from Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia.

Delegations of Egypt and Ethiopia arrived in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Wednesday to take part in the tripartite meeting on the GERD, which has caused controversy among the three countries on the share of Nile river's water.

Foreign ministers, ministers of water resources and intelligence chiefs from the three countries attended the meeting, which aims to foster collaboration and resolve their differences on the dam's construction.

The meeting is expected to review the means to utilize the water resources and make the GERD a means of development in the three countries instead of a source of conflict and difference.

The meeting is held as result of a recent summit which brought together leaders of Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa late January.

The last round of talks between the three countries on the GERD ended last November without reaching an agreement on a technical report prepared by French firms about the potential impact of the dam.

In late December 2017, Egypt proposed to Ethiopia to let the World Bank act as a neutral party in the activities of the tripartite technical committee, but Ethiopia refused the Egyptian proposal.

The GERD, which a cost of 4.7 billion U.S. dollars, is now 64 percent complete. Ethiopia hopes the project will provide a constant supply of clean and affordable power in the future, and accelerate its shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial powerhouse.

But Egypt, as a Nile downstream country, fears that the construction of the GERD would affect its share of the Nile water and lead to a water shortage in the most populous Arab country. Enditem