ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopia should keep a watchful eye on Egypt with a view to upholding the national interest under any circumstances, said expert. The negotiation on the initial filling and annual operation of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) among Ethiopia the Sudan and Egypt will be taken place soon. Thus, Ethiopia should be cautious and enter into the negotiation, if Egypt is only keen on mutual benefit as Ethiopia has been advocating for, said Samuel Tefera (PhD), an Assistant Professor at the Center for African and Oriental Studies and Associate Dean for Research and Technology Transfer at Addis Ababa University.
The US brokered talks failed to materialize due to Egypt’s persistent claim to divert the talks to water sharing, an issue of the entire Nile riparian countries. Ethiopia inclined to argue filling is part of the construction based on the Declaration of Principles (DoP) signed in 2015 by the three countries.
“We should proceed filling the dam and showing the reality that it won’t severely harm the downstream countries while undertaking the negotiation” Samuel noted. Ethiopia should be conscious while continuing the negotiation unless it will be like capturing a surrender enemy with full armaments, he underlined.
The project is in a good posture and this needs careful negotiation and decision to keep the dam for its intended goal, he recommended.
Samuel believed that Ethiopian negotiators need to understand the mysterious interest of their counterparts in the next technical negotiation about “what is new” in comparison to Ethiopia’s national interest.
Since the inception, Ethiopia has been constructing the dam in a cooperative comportment than any of the nations which waste the water for extravagant projects without consulting riparian countries, he said.
Ethiopia allowed even international consultants or third party professionals to evaluate the design documents of the dam where no one did these efforts before. These all efforts show that Ethiopia is keen to cooperate on the project to build confidence on the fact that the project will not cause significant harm on downstream countries, as to Samuel.
“While we are participating in the discussions in good faith, Egypt and her faction are not keen as we do.” In any case, he said, Ethiopia ought to work aggressively on the establishment of Nile River Basin Commission approaching the rest two countries to ratify the agreement for the formation of the legal institute. Then, all talks around the Nile should be held in an African soil.
Till then, the African Union should be awakening to proactively engage in the tripartite negotiation on the GERD, Samuel suggested.
Filling the dam is the easiest task for Ethiopia as it has been realizing the largest duty of constructing the dam, he mentioned.
“But any discussion should not be at the expense of filling the dam as the Egyptians wish for.” He is confident that the dam will be functional soon so long as Ethiopia maintains its firm position regarding the process.
In any case, the downstream countries should achieve development demands as they are also part of the Nile river basin. And Ethiopia also needs to take the issue as part of the other downstream countries than only a trilateral argument, he underlined.
The Egyptian counterparts do not care about Ethiopia’s development; therefore, they tried a lot to keep their lavish interest. Accordingly, Ethiopian scholars ought to actively engage in intellectual discourse supporting the Ethiopian development project on the Nile, he suggested.
He also noted that intellectuals should intensively use the media to clarify the significance of the dam to Ethiopia and other downstream countries. Furthermore, the government should strengthen a firm stand either in negotiating and supporting intellectuals working in the area, as to Samuel. There is no legal obligation that forces Ethiopia to undertake the next negotiation based on the DoP that Egypt also agreed to make the negotiation in parallel with the construction of the dam.
The last negotiation held between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt in Washington was concluded with disagreement of the countries on filling, water release and management among others while Egypt solely signed the document prepared by the US Department of Treasury that witnessed clear bias of observers.
The Ethiopian herald may 26/2020
BY YOHANES JEMANEH
