CAIRO, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi met with the country's top officials to discuss Egypt's talks with Ethiopia and Sudan regarding the grand Ethiopian dam built on their shared Nile River, the Egyptian presidency said Wednesday.
The meeting involved the prime minister, the ministers of defense, foreign affairs and water resources, and the intelligence chief, according to Egyptian Presidency spokesman Bassam Rady.
"The president was updated with the Egyptian position in the negotiations in the light of the U.S. sponsorship of the tripartite talks," Rady said.
The water and foreign ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan recently started new rounds of talks in Washington over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), joined by representatives from the United States and the World Bank, after years of fruitless negotiations.
While the upstream Nile Basin country Ethiopia and downstream Sudan eye massive benefits from the GERD construction, downstream Egypt is concerned that it might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of Nile water.
After their latest meetings in Washington on Jan. 13-15, the three countries will resume talks there on Jan. 28-29, through which Egypt hopes to reach a final and viable agreement over Ethiopia's filling and operation of the dam.
Ethiopia started building its grand hydropower dam in 2011 on the Blue Nile branch. The dam is expected to produce over 6,000 megawatts of electricity and become Africa's largest hydropower dam upon completion. Enditem
