(Daniel Berhane)
Minister Dr Mohamed Bahaa El Din, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, dismissed that news report that Egypt is preparing to attack Ethiopia to preserve.
It is to be recalled that MiddleEast NewsLine claimed last week that: “[Egypt’s] military has been preparing for the prospect that air strikes would be ordered to stop construction or simply destroy the Ethiopian dam,”
Minister El Din claimed that the news is baseless and there has not been such discussion in the government. He made the remarks in an interview with a channel of Al-Jazeera on Saturday evening.
Dr. El Din claimed that he, as a member of the government, would not recommend military solutions for handling the Renaissance dam issue.
This is not a weakness, the Minister noted, rather commitment to negotiation and the language of dialogue, which are certain to bring much better results. He added that talks of threats and war come back with negative results.
The Minister hopes that South Sudan will not rush to sign of the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), claiming that the signing would not add anything as it is already signed by 6 countries. The Minister is apparently saying that the CFA’s requirement of the signature of 6 countries is fulfilled and they can start ratification process with or without South Sudan anyways.
There are non-military measures
On the other-hand, former Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Dr. Mohamed Nasr Allam claimed there are effective measures – far from the use of violence – to pressure Ethiopia,
In an interview with an Egyptian newspaper last Friday, the former Minister ruled-out the military option to prevent Ethiopia from completing Renaissance dam, explaining that there are alternatives to solve the problem, including convincing Ethiopia to reduce the dam’s reservoir capacity from 74 billion cubic meters to 14 billion or to build smaller dams.
Dr. Allam suggested that there are many political measures which can be applied in coordination with “the brotherly State of Sudan” to pressure Ethiopia.
Refusing to buy electricity from Ethiopia could be one of such measures, he said.
Dr. Allam urged Egyptian officials to work with donors to prevent the provision of “any financial support, technical, technicians, based on the Egyptian-Sudanese booklet that shows damage to the dam”.
He also recommended strengthening ties with countries in the region such as Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti.
Dr. Allam suggested lobbying the Nile Basin countries by explaining Egypt’s perspective, the impact of dam and that Egypt is not aganst the development of Ethiopia.
In a related development, spokesperson of Egypt’s President downplayed tensions with Ethiopia last Wednesday.
He was quoted as saying that: Ethiopia will not let its construction Renaissance Dam affect Egypt, if the dam has a negative impact, Ethiopians will “understand the situation and not allow harm to befall Egypt in the light of the historic ties between the two counties and the other Nile Basin countries” .
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(Compiled from various Arabic sites of Egypt, with the help of Google translation service)
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Training, arming and funding OLF was the last days activities of Hosni Mubarak Government. War and military option was an official policy of Egypt,
dear egyptian, i have read your statistics and understood your point of view and i understand what that means. let me tell you the ethiopian point of view. we dont want conflict with egypt as we are brothers and the fact that we are Africans makes sense. Ethiopia is the largest contributor to the nile which is about 85% and all these years people in the bank of the nile have been struggling to farm waiting for it once a year(2 months of rainfall season) and they produce once a year. Ethiopian population as you said is well over 80 million and the population continues to grow. food shortages have been witnessed and ethiopia has vast area but limited farming machinery and modern agricultural irrigation techniques. All these years, we have been looking for means to use rainfall for our agriculture and needed energy for our industries which till recently is a problem. And so we came up with this idea of building a hydro electric dam which hits the turbine and follows its course to egypt.if you think about it, this resource that we have at our disposal can help us achieve our mission.This is a resource which should benefit both countries not just one. The treaty which was signed between egypt and sudan without the inclusion of ethiopia made both countries a veto power regarding the nile water and do you seriously think it is fair?And if there are other means we can use it together, the thing i think is benefical is if egypt uses the water majorly but make payments for it be it financially or techology wise as ethiopia is the major contributor of the nile. But instead of that, the egyptian governments say that the right of the 1927 agreement should be respected and they drained the financial loan sources and used egypts influentiality.We do want egypt to use it, but heyy we should also use it or Egyptian government should be fair and make compensation for the 85% usage it is using. We are people of ancient civilizations and we both are great people so i sure hope we will reach a compromise.
P.S. if u can though, can u explain to me the basis of the 1927 agreement and its legitimacy?
Dear Ethiopians
You have full right to get benefit from your resources.We in Egypt ,we don’t like the idea of war with ethiopia
You want the dam for elecricity ,to get rid of poverty.these are noble causes.But the dam has a real dangers on us.
for example
we in egypt:-
1-in Egypt our population is 84,314,326 people according to wiki
and our water consumption is 64 billion cubic meter whit 55 billion from Nile….that means average per capita water use in Egypt is 700 cubic meters [per year]
while below 1000 cubic meters means water poverty
2-in Ethiopia population is 91,195,675
and your average per capita water use is 1,355 cubic meter and most of it not from the river
97.5% of Egypt is desert …nothing more
every shortage of 4 billion of cubic meter of water consumption means ….loss of 70 million m of agricultural lands…..2 million families in streets…loss of food production by 5 billion dollar
if you started to fill the dam which its capacity is 63,000,000,000 m3 in 6 years as your government said
we will loss 19 billion cubic meter of Nile water
and this means DISASTER .this means KILLING innocent people for electricity
which only the foreign companies & bankers that will profit from it by dept that they paid for your governement and us Ethiopians & Egyptians would benefit nothing….
I am sure if your government were honest with you dear Good Ethiopian people ,you wouldn’t approve that
war would solve nothing and also disrespect to others life
i have a dream that both nations become good friends and allies against poverty and corruption
and this can become true by good listenning to each other
sorry for my bad english
P.S. these numbers are real ….if you don’t believe it .try to search it
Egypt has overpopulated itself beyond the capacity of the thread of water that runs through it to the point all upstream must cave to it’s wishes? Ethiopia has fallen victim long enough to the undermining manoeuvres of a desperate state unwilling to make hard and realistic choices. They seem to be unable to consider options within their own jurisdiction to preserve the water they have, such as curtailing the massive evaporation through Lake Nasser and population control which pressures their finite resources. Better to bully the others than take responsibility for what they themselves have wrought? At some point soon at the rate they have progressed over the last 50 years, every drop the Nile could flow would not be enough to quench their thirst. The UN and U.S. need to say enough is enough to Egypt before there is total all out war and Ethiopia needs to take measures to strengthen themselves militarily as a precaution in the meantime as a deterrent to consideration of military strikes against her.
I am studying about Nile the war is unthinkable unless Egypt military totally control and wipe out all Ethiopian populations.History taught us they attempted it several time in the past and end up with huge failure.
his so called effective measures beside a the use of violence for instance
1. in this point he underestimate the determination of Ethiopian peoples to abort Egyptian hegemony over Nile water.
2. we can sell the energy to lower riparian like Kenya or our economy can use it .
3. their commitment to CAF indicate they rather want to exercise Equity utilization and no harm principle.
so his effective measures beside a the use of violence is naive or another attempt to prolong egyptian monopoly over nile water. The only solution is not to prolong Egyptian hegemony over Nile water but negotiate for equity utilization.
We don’t beg finance,techinic & techinicians from any country for our dam complition we are enough!!!!!!!!!! If u want z futurity of ourrrrrr river read z holy bible it’s clearly written.
How fool he is to dismiss war while he is underlining the importance of coordinating with the enemies of Ethiopia such as Eritrea? Anyways, we will surely complete the dam to survive as human beings, but not to attack them.
Reblogged this on Fitsum Girma's Views.
if what they are talking is really what they are thinking they deserve to be praised. But, i doubt and we should doubt them too. what makes them talk in terms of cooperation at this point in time?? the answer matters most!