Ethiopian FM: South Sudan to join Nile framework agreement

South Sudan has said it is on the way to join the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, which Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi had signed, said the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry in its weekly media report. The report quoted South Sudan s Water and Irrigation Minister Paul Mayom Akech as saying "South Sudan does not recognize - and underline does not recognize the content of the 1959 agreement." The minister added that at the time South Sudan did not exist and could not say anything, but today we say, we have nothing to do with this agreement. The report referred to what the minister told a local radio station that South Sudan had joined the Nile Basin Initiative and had already gone a long way towards joining the Cooperative Framework Agreement which he described as an entity within which all the Nile Basin countries come together and discuss how best they could utilize water resources. The report also mentioned that Egypt sent a high level delegation led by Prime Minister Hisham Qandil to South Sudan last week. The Egyptian Prime Minister signed memoranda of Understanding with Vice-President Riek Machar on education, health, agriculture and investment. There was no MoU signed on the Nile waters.