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Sudan is set to join a new round of talks with Egypt and Ethiopia on Sunday in a bid to resolve a long-standing dispute over a massive Ethiopian dam on the Blue Nile, state media reported.
The three countries have held several rounds of talks since Ethiopia launched the project in 2011, but have so far failed to reach an agreement on filling and operating the vast reservoir behind the dam. 145 meters high.
The last one, organized by videoconference in early November, broke down without moving forward.
At the end of last month, Egypt called the Ethiopian charge d’affaires after his foreign ministry spokesman said the dispute over the dam had become a welcome distraction from domestic issues for the Cairo government. .
Sudanese state news agency SUNA said officials of the current African Union president South Africa would be involved in the new round of negotiations.
Quoting an anonymous official, SUNA said Sudan would propose giving African Union experts a “greater role” in negotiations for a binding agreement on the filling and operation of the dam.
Cairo has expressed fears that the Ethiopian Renaissance Great Dam will significantly reduce the flow of the Nile, with devastating effects for the more than 97 million Egyptians who depend on it.
Ethiopia says the hydroelectric power produced at the dam is vital to meeting the energy needs of its larger population.
He insists that the water supply of downstream countries will not be affected.
Sudan, which suffered deadly floods last summer when the Blue Nile reached its highest level since the record began more than a century ago, hopes the new dam will help regulate the river’s flow.
The Blue Nile, which meets the White Nile in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, supplies the vast majority of the combined flow of the Nile through northern Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean.
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