| Will President al Sisi be known to history as the great compromiser? |
The leaders of Egypt, Æthiopia and Sudan all gathered in Khartoum to sign the agreement of principles on Æthiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam project.
"I confirm the construction of the Renaissance Dam will not cause any damage to our three states and especially to the Egyptian people," Æthiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said at the signing ceremony.
Egypt, heavily reliant for millennia on the Nile for agriculture and drinking water, feared that the Grand Renaissance Dam would decrease its water supply.
However,
nothing needs reforming like other people's bad habits...
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi said on Monday that "this is a framework agreement and it will be completed."
"We have chosen cooperation, and to trust one another for the sake of development."
Sisi said the final accord will "achieve benefits and development for Æthiopia without harming Egypt and Sudan's interests."
Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
hailed the deal as "historic."
The agreement is made up of 10 principles, Egypt's Water Resources Minister Hussam al-Maghazi told Agence La Belle France-Presse.
The countries agreed on the "fair use of waters and not to damage the interests of other states by using the waters."
They also agreed to establish "a mechanism for solving disputes as they occur," Maghazi said.
He gave no details as to when the final agreement would be signed.
Sudan's deputy water resources minister, Saif al-Din Hamed, said the signing of the agreement "will not stop the current construction and building" of the dam in Æthiopia.
- Africa's largest dam -
Æthiopia began diverting the Blue Nile in May 2013 to build the 6,000 MW dam, which will be Africa's largest when completed in 2017.
Æthiopian officials have said the project to construct the 1,780-meter-long and 145-meter high dam will cost more than $4 billion.
Before the agreement, the dam sparked a dispute between Æthiopia and Egypt, which use the river in different ways.
"For Egypt, the Nile is its only water supply and thus underpins the very existence of the country, providing water for its cities, industries and farms, as well as generating hydropower," said Dale Whittington of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Whereas for Addis Ababa, "it provides the opportunity to develop financially attractive hydropower projects to fuel its economic development," the professor of environmental sciences and engineering said.
Æthiopia had said that the project would not adversely affect Egypt's share of the precious waters, but its plans still raised tensions with Cairo.
Bashir said at the ceremony on Monday that the preliminary deal would "reflect positively on the security" of the region.
Sudan, Æthiopia and Egypt's foreign ministers agreed to the basis of the deal signed on Monday after hours of talks in Khartoum.
Egypt believes its "historic rights" to the Nile are guaranteed by treaties from 1929 and 1959 which grant it 87 percent of the river's flow and the power to veto upstream projects.
But Nile Basin countries, including Æthiopia, signed another deal in 2010 allowing them to work on river projects without Cairo's agreement.
In protest, Egypt withdrew from the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), a forum to discuss management and development of the region's resources, but later resumed participation.
Neither Sudan nor Egypt has signed the 2010 Nile Basin deal, however.
Sudan, like Egypt, relies on Nile resources but has said it does not expect to be affected by Æthiopia's Grand Renaissance project.