Ethiopia to go on filling Nile mega-dam despite impasse: minister

Ethiopia said Wednesday it would not be deterred from impounding water at its Nile mega-dam, despite a persistent impasse with downstream countries worried about their water supply.
The
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has been a source of tension in the Nile River
basin ever since Ethiopia broke ground on it in 2011.
Downstream
neighbours Egypt and Sudan view the dam as a threat because of their dependence
on Nile waters, while Ethiopia considers it essential for its electrification
and development.
The
latest round of talks concluded Tuesday in Kinshasa with no resolution to
long-running disputes over how the dam will be operated.
But
Ethiopian water minister Seleshi Bekele told a press conference Wednesday that
Ethiopia would continue filling the dam's massive reservoir during the upcoming
rainy season, which normally begins in June or July.
"As construction progresses, filling
takes place," Seleshi said.
"We don't deviate from that at all."
The
reservoir has a capacity of 74 billion cubic metres.
Filling
began last year, with Ethiopia announcing in July 2020 it had hit its target of
4.9 billion cubic metres -- enough to test the dam's first two turbines, an
important milestone on the way towards actually producing energy.
The
goal is to impound an additional 13.5 billion cubic metres this year.
- Fears of 'instability' -
Egypt
and Sudan wanted a trilateral agreement on the dam's operations to be reached
before reservoir filling began.
But
Ethiopia says filling is a natural part of the dam's construction, and is thus
impossible to postpone.
Last
year Sudan said the filling process caused water shortages including in the
capital Khartoum.
Seleshi
disputed this Wednesday but said Ethiopia had offered to share data with Sudan
during filling this year, adding that officials "don't want to be made
accountable for problems that we haven't created."
He
complained, though, that Sudan and Egypt spent most of the time in Kinshasa
pushing for an elevated role in negotiations for observers South Africa, the
United States and the European Union.
Ethiopia
has rejected this, saying it would undermine the process headed by the
Democratic Republic of Congo, the current chair of the African Union.
Ethiopia's
foreign ministry said Tuesday it expected talks to resume later this month.
Egypt
has described them as the last chance to reach an agreement, after President
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said last week that the region faces "unimaginable
instability" over the project.
Sudan's
foreign minister, Mariam al-Sadiq al-Mahdi, told reporters Tuesday that
Ethiopia "threatens the people of the Nile basin, and Sudan directly."
Seleshi
on Wednesday played down the possibility that tensions over the dam would lead
to conflict.
"This
kind of thinking is unnecessary, and exaggerating this kind of thing doesn't
benefit any country," he said.