ADDIS ABABA – Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed met with Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo to discuss bilateral and regional issues.
PM Abiy traveled to Cairo to attend a summit for Sudan’s neighboring countries on Thursday to find peaceful solutions to the Sudan crisis.
Ahead of the summit, Abiy and al-Sisi discussed “bilateral and regional issues of mutual interest.”
The discussion was “marked by the spirit of cooperation”, the PM said in a tweet.
delayed GERD Filling
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been a source of decade-long diplomatic standoff between the two Nile countries.
The last trilateral talks failed to yield an agreement on the hydroelectric dam’s filling and operations. Cairo insists Addis Ababa cease filling the dam until such a deal is reached – a position Ethiopia sees as contradictory to previously agreed principles.
Ethiopia is filling the GERD reservoir gradually and during its rainy season to allow the river to continue flowing to downstream countries. This year, the dam will not be filled until the end of August to assuage the concerns of Sudan and Egypt.
“Ethiopia is committed to take into account the concerns of Lower Riparian countries of the Nile, in the filling of the GERD,” PM Abiy told parliamentarians last week.
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