CAIRO — Following a week of local consultations, the technical and legal negotiating committees in Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia resumed a second round of discussions Aug. 3 to reach a comprehensive and binding agreement governing the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam under the auspices of the African Union. 

The fresh round of talks comes after Ethiopia unilaterally began to fill the dam's reservoir with about 5 billion cubic meters of water without reaching agreement with downstream countries Egypt and Sudan.

The presidents of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia agreed during the mini-AU summit held July 21 to return to negotiations. The second round of negotiations kicked off under the auspices of the African Union on July 27, but the delegations of Egypt and Sudan have expressed great reservations toward Ethiopia's move to begin filling the reservoir and Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Dina Mufti had said at a July 24 press conference that his country “is not seeking a binding agreement but a guiding agreement that can be modified as needed.”

The Sudanese Ministry of Water said in a July 27 press statement that the Ethiopian move is “a harmful and worrying precedent” and the Egyptian Ministry of Water said in its own statement the same day, “The unilateral filling carried out by Ethiopia raised a panoply of questions about the ability of the negotiation process to reach a fair, balanced and binding agreement to fill and operate the dam.”