Egypt rejects Renaissance Dam designs

Cairo - Prime Minister Hisham Qandil gave a statement on Monday 10/6/2013 before the Shura Council (SC) on the government strategy for addressing the issue of the Renaissance Dam.

Qandil said Egypt does not approve building the Renaissance Dam on the basis of available data and designs as it can pose grave danger to Egypt's water share and bring down the volume of power generated from the High Dam (HD).

He stressed that Egypt possessed the methods and experience to conduct analytical studies that confirmed the negative impacts of the Ethiopian dam on the country in the light of the scenarios of filling and operating the dam.

Qandil said the issue of water "is a matter of life or death and a national security issue in the first rate", adding Egypt in its geographical nature suffers drought and depends fully on the Nile water, which represents 98% of its water resources.

He underlined that Egypt has never ceded its historical rights which are guaranteed by international laws.

The Prime Minister also reviewed the findings of the report of the tripartite committee, which consisted of experts from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, for making assessment of the Ethiopian Dam. He said most studies and designs offered by the Ethiopian side showed big shortage in the studies and designs of the dam.

He added that the dam's storage capacity increased from 14.5 to 74 billion cubic meters and the Ethiopian government did not offer all data of the dam to the committee to make the necessary assessment.

Meanwhile, Minister of Irrigation Mohamed Bahaa el-Din said Egypt will not allow harming its water security.

Addressing the SC's session, the minister said "we were waiting the tripartite committee's report on the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to know its dangers."

We encourage any project that help increase water resources, but the dam is set to retain nearly 74 billion cubic meters of water that are stored in the HD, he said.

For his part, Minister of Electricity Ahmed Imam said that power generation system in Egypt's HD will be negatively affected by Ethiopia's planned dam.

Egypt's stance in this issue is strong, said Ambassador Ismail el-Hefni, Deputy Foreign Minister for African Affairs.

He stressed that Egypt would hammer out a work plan with the Sudanese officials "to put forward our stance in this issue from all sides."

On the same context, Sudan denied reports accusing it of turning its back to Egypt in the crisis of Ethiopia's dam.

Sudan stands by Egypt in the issues of the Nile water and will never leave it alone in this regard, Sudanese ambassador to Egypt Kamal Eddin Hassan Ali said.