Talaat launches campaign against visit

Egyptian parliamentarian Talaat Khalil revealed that he will collect signatures of Egyptian parliamentarians to refuse the visit of Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to the Egyptian parliament, saying that a large number of parliamentarians expressed their readiness to participate in his campaign.

He added that the reasons for the refusal of the House of Representatives to receive the Disalline, that the African country did not want to serve the interests of Egypt at any time, saying that Ethiopia performed a major role to incite the African states against Egypt many times before.

He added that that TNCRD did not reach an agreement on adopting guidelines. The guidelines were indicated in a report prepared by a technical committee on the effects of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile Basin States after two days of talks.

He declared that Egypt approves of the report’s outcomes, but the Ethiopian and Sudanese did not express consensus and called for amendments. Egypt halted all negotiations and said that all future decisions are at the hand of the cabinet.

He stated that that the dam’s construction is going faster than the tripartite talks. On October 1, The Telegraph reported that Ethiopia is finalizing the construction of the dam and then will start filling its reservoir.

He described the construction of the dam as a breach to the international law as it prohibits another state from getting its water share. He stated that Ethiopia has avoided addressing the dam’s negative impact indicated in the technical committee’s report.

“We will not dispose of one single cubic meter of our water shares,” Fleifel added. He stipulated that the goal of building the dam is political rather than developmental.

He stressed that Egypt must take a further solid and stronger stance on the matter. He accused Ethiopia of lacking transparency in the negotiations asserting that the state’s soft handling of the matter incurred the construction of over 60 percent of the dam.