Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is scheduled to visit Ethiopia next week for talks on a standoff regarding the multi-billion dollar dam project in River Nile.
Shoukry will hold discussions with his Ethiopian counterpart as the two sides seek a solution on the matter.
Cairo says the dam that Addis Ababa is building will threaten water supplies that have fed Egypt’s agriculture and economy for thousands of years.
Ethiopia however hopes the Grand Renaissance Dam will help make it Africa’s biggest power exporter.
The East African country has accused The North African side of flexing its political muscle to deter financiers from backing other Ethiopian power projects.
Delegations from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia met in Cairo in November to approve a study by a French firm commissioned to assess the dam’s environmental and economic impact.
But negotiations stalled when they failed to agree on the initial report with each blaming others for blocking progress.
Sudan’s Irrigation Minister Moataz Moussa said Egypt was unwilling to accept amendments to the report put forward by Khartoum and Addis Ababa.
Sudan and Ethiopia had expressed concern over several points, especially the proposed baseline from which the study would measure the dam’s impacts, Moussa said in November.
Another source of disagreement is whether Ethiopia plans to complete construction before negotiations over water flows have finished.
Egyptian officials say safeguarding the country’s quota of Nile water is a matter of national security.
