CAIRO, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation denied on Friday that it had encountered any "pressure to relinquish some of its demands" during the negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in Washington.
The foreign ministers and water resources officials of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan reached a preliminary deal on Wednesday after three days of meetings in Washington with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and World Bank President David Malpass.
The three countries agreed to meet in Washington from Jan. 28-29 to reach "a final agreement" for the filling and operation of the GERD.
The ministers agreed that there is a shared responsibility of the three countries in drought management.
The preliminary deal tackled the first stage of filling the dam. The filling will take place during the wet season, generally from July to August, and will continue in September given certain conditions, according to the Egyptian ministry.
The GERD that has been constructed since 2011 on the Blue Nile in the northern Ethiopia highlands is expected to produce over 6,000 megawatts of electricity and become Africa's largest hydropower dam upon completion.
However, Egyptian officials are concerned that filing the reservoir too quickly could significantly reduce the amount of Nile water available to Egypt.
Ethiopia wants to finish filling the reservoir, with a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters, in five to six years, while Egypt seeks to prolong the period to avoid the possible negative effects.
