Egypt rejects Ethiopian PM's statements on building new dams

CAIRO, May 31 (Xinhua) -- Egypt rejected on Monday the statements of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that Ethiopia will build a number of dams across the country.

In a statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Ahmed's statements reveal once again that Ethiopia is dealing in bad faith with the Nile River and other international rivers that it shares with neighboring countries.

On Sunday, Ahmed announced that Ethiopia will build more than 100 small and medium dams in various states of the country in the coming fiscal year.

"Egypt has always recognized the right of all Nile Basin countries to establish water projects and exploit the resources of the Nile River in order to achieve development for its brotherly peoples. But these projects and facilities must be established after coordination, consultation and agreement with the countries that may be affected, especially the downstream countries," said the ministry statement.

The statements of the Ethiopian Prime Minister are nothing but a continuation of the regrettable Ethiopian approach that ignores the international law that regulates the use of international rivers, it added.

Egypt and Sudan have been raising concerns about Ethiopia's decision to unilaterally carry out the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) later this year, as what it did last year, without reaching a legally binding agreement on the rules of filling and operating the dam.

Both Egypt and Sudan seek to form an international quartet of the African Union, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to mediate a desired agreement.

Ethiopia started building the GERD in 2011, while Egypt is concerned it might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the Nile water. Sudan has also raised similar concerns over the dam.

Over the past few years, the tripartite talks on the rules of filling and operating the giant hydropower dam, with a total capacity of 74 billion cubic meters, have been fruitless, including those hosted earlier by the United States and the African Union.