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Egypt unmoved on Ethiopia's plan to fill Renaissance Dam reservoir

The Ethiopian government has released its plan for filling the reservoir of the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, but Cairo is balking due to stalled technical and impact studies.
A photo taken on March 31, 2015 shows the Grand Renaissance Dam under construction near the Sudanese-Ethiopian border. Ethiopia began diverting the Blue Nile in May 2013 to build the 6,000 megawatt dam, which will be Africa's largest when completed in 2017. The leaders of Egypt and Ethiopia promised on March 24 to boost cooperation on the Nile river and turn a page on a long-running row over Addis Ababa's controversial dam project. Egypt, heavily reliant for millennia on the Nile for agriculture and drinkin
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CAIRO — Abdel Mahmoud Abdel Halim, Sudan's ambassador to Egypt, issued an invitation on March 13 to the Egyptian government for an April 4-5 tripartite meeting, along with Ethiopia, to discuss the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) reservoir. The invitation was extended to foreign affairs and irrigation ministers as well as, for the first time, security and intelligence officials.

The Ethiopian government had formally handed over to Egypt and Sudan in mid-February its unilateral plan for filling the dam reservoir amid stalled technical and political talks with Egypt and Sudan. So far, disagreements have hindered studies on the dam's impact and all three states have failed to agree on issues involving filling and operating the dam.

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