Egypt on Friday called on the United Nations Security Council to intervene to restart talks on the hydroelectric dam being built by Ethiopia on the Blue Nile near the border with Sudan, Reuters reported. Talks over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam were halted once again this week, this time only about a fortnight before its expected start-up. "The Arab Republic of Egypt took this decision in light of the stalled negotiations that took place recently on the Renaissance Dam as a result of Ethiopian stances that are not positive," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday. The latest round of talks, which had started on June 9 over videoconference, followed a previous round of negotiations in Washington, which ended without agreement in February. Ethiopia started building the GERD in 2011, while Egypt, a downstream Nile Basin country that relies on the river for its fresh water, is concerned that the dam might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the water resources of the river. The GERD, extending on an area of 1,800 square km, is scheduled to be completed in three years at a cost of $4.7 billion. Egypt, which is almost entirely dependent on the Nile for its fresh water supplies, sees it as a potentially existential threat. It is anxious to secure a legally binding deal that would guarantee minimum flows and a mechanism for resolving disputes before the dam starts operating. Egypt's letter to the Security Council was based on Article 35 of the Charter of the United Nations, which permits member states to alert the Council to any crisis that would threaten international peace and security. — SPA
