Sudan welcomes UAE initiative on row with Ethiopia

Cairo: Sudan has welcomed a UAE initiative to resolve a border dispute with neighbouring Ethiopia and a long-running row over a Nile dam, Sudanese media reported.

“The Council of ministers welcomes the UAE initiative to mediate between Sudan and Ethiopia in the border issue and between Khartoum, Cairo and Addis Ababa in the issue of the [Ethiopian] Renaissance Dam,” the Sudanese government said in a statement without details.

Based on a report from a technical committee, the government said: “It welcomes in principle the initiative within the framework of preserving the country’s supreme interests.”

Tensions have recently mounted between Sudan and Ethiopia due to a border dispute, prompting the latter to reject a Sudanese proposal to expand mediation to resolve the years-long disagreement over the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam (GERD)on the Nile. Cairo has accepted the Sudanese proposal.

Both Egypt and Sudan have voiced worries over the construction of the dam, saying it threatens their vital shares of the Nile waters.

Ethiopia has repeatedly denied these worries and defended its construction of the $5 billion dam as being vital for its development and lifting its population of around 107 million out of poverty.

Years of negotiations between the three countries have failed to resolve the dispute.

Ethiopia has recently announced a unilateral plan for a second filling of the GERD scheduled for July amid objections from Cairo and Khartoum that say the filling should not be conducted without a prior agreement.