President Shimon Peres is to visit Ethiopia and Ghana next Month, according to several Arabic news outlets of Egypt and Sudan. The news outlets cited an Israeli newspaper ‘Maariv’.
President Peres, who will be accompanied by ‘a large delegation of businessmen’, intends to strengthen diplomatic and trade ties and also to encounter Iranian influence in the Continent.
Though the news is reported in the last 5 days by several Arabic outlets, including this, this, and this, it is intriguingly absent on the online version of Maariv, other Israeli news outlets, and the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs. However, one Israeli website mentioned President Perez’s proposed visit as matter-of-factly.
Typically, the Egyptian and Sudanese websites which picked the news are associating President Perez’s visit with the Nile river utilization issue. A few of them claimed this would be the first visit by an Israeli President to the Nile Basin countries.
It should be remembered that Mohamoud Abas President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) visited Ethiopia last year, when he laid a corner stone for the construction of a new embassy building in a plot of area the Ethiopian government gave to the PA free of charge. PLO has already an embassy in Addis Ababa that was established decades ago by Palestinian Liberations Organization (PLO).
In a related development, a few Egyptian mews outlets are claiming that ‘Egypt succeeded in cutting off international funding for Ethiopia’s new dam’.
Two Egyptian sites claimed, ‘Ethiopia has had to resort to subscribe to the popular to finance the construction of the dam.’
Though the news outlets cite an unnamed source in the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Water resources, I suspect it is caused by their late reception of the news of the Treasury bond or it may be an effort to console the Egyptian public whom they needlessly depressed with their doomsday reports.
You may read a Google Translation of the ‘news’ first-hand below.
*************
Egypt succeeded in cutting off funding to meet the international «Millennium»
Monday – April 18, 2011
Egyptian efforts succeeded in thwarting the efforts of Ethiopia to the World Bank and other international agencies to obtain the necessary funding to build a dam that stores the Great Millennium 62 billion cubic meters of water from the Blue Nile to Egypt and set up cost of 80 billion «The Birr» Ethiopians.
Ethiopia has had to resort to subscribe to the popular to finance the construction of the dam, according to the source at the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, pointing out that Egypt did not respond to the invitation of Addis Ababa to Cairo to enter a partner in the construction of the dam so that there are extensive studies to examine the seriousness of the dam on water security in Egypt. He explained that the studies determine the feasibility of the benefit that can be traced on the Egyptian side, and the requirements set by Egypt in the basics of running the Millennium dam with no effect on their water from the Nile River.
Source: http://www.masress.com/rosadaily/108868 AND http://www.rosaonline.net/Daily/News.asp?id=108868
Leave a Comment