The struggle over the waters of the Nile continues, according to AL Monitor‘s Ayah Aman:
Negotiations between Cairo, Addis Ababa and Khartoum have entered a decisive stage in which the parties must express their final stance concerning the controversy and disagreement caused by Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam, which threatens Egypt’s annual share of the Nile waters. Meetings involving the parties’ foreign affairs and water ministers have intensified, as Ethiopia and Egypt are preparing by finding alternatives that speed up the implementation of the studies should the feud deepen and the negotiations fall through.
Egypt blames Ethiopia, and vice versa:
He added, “The Ethiopians’ intransigence and bias toward the French consultancy BRL so that it carries the studies alone without the participation of the Dutch Deltares leave us with many doubts. We are also skeptical about the acceleration of the dam’s construction, which makes us believe that Ethiopia is not serious about acting the results of the studies.”
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian side seemed to take a different view. The country’s ministers of foreign affairs and water were keen to highlight the political commitment announced by Ethiopia, consisting of avoiding damage and working to solve all the technical issues within the tripartite technical committee through finding alternatives that speed up the implementation of the studies. And since the Egyptian side voiced its rejection of the process, the Ethiopian foreign affairs minister asked to postpone the meeting for two weeks until an answer to the Egyptian demands is reached.
Leading to:
Although the stakeholders are waiting for the next meeting’s results, refusing to release any statement regarding the success or failure of the negotiations, a new line of accusations has appeared in the Egyptian and Ethiopian media, especially after Oromo minorities intensified their demonstrations last week and Egypt was accused of supporting opposition movements to weaken the Ethiopian government’s development efforts. And as no Egyptian officials have responded to these accusations, discussion has been animated in the Egyptian media about this issue and on holding the Ethiopian government responsible for the deaths of the protesters.
How a demonstration in Cairo will pressure the Ethiopians is unclear. The Oromo are
… an ethnic group inhabiting Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and parts of Somalia.[4] With around 25 million members, they constitute the single largest ethnicity in Ethiopia and the wider Horn of Africa, at approximately 35% of Ethiopia’s population according to the 2007 census.[1][5][6] Oromos speak the Oromo language as a mother tongue (also called Afaan Oromoo and Oromiffa), which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. The name was given as Ilm’ Orma (“Sons of Men” or an eponymous ‘Orma’) in the 19th century;[7] the present form is probably an obsolete plural of the same word orma (“person, stranger”). [Wikipedia]
A blog dedicated to the Oromo is here.
