Egypt, Ethiopia united against ‘conflict’ over NileCAIRO: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said on Thursday at talks in Cairo they were opposed to any "conflict" over the sharing of Nile waters. The Nile should serve as "a source of cohesion... and development, not of conflict" with Ethiopia, which is building a controversial dam that has raised Egyptian concerns over water supplies, he said. "We agreed that we must make sure that this great river never becomes an object of competition, mistrust and conflict," Desalegn told a joint news conference. Sisi said Ethiopia was not aiming "to harm the interests of Egypt", while reiterating Cairo’s call for the World Bank to serve as a neutral interlocutor between the two countries on technical issues related to the Nile. Egypt relies almost totally on the Nile for irrigation and drinking water, and says it has "historic rights" to the river, guaranteed by treaties from 1929 and 1959.

Source: Ethiopian News January 18, 2018 14:26 UTC