KHARTOUM, Oct. 31 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese authorities on Saturday said that the talks regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will resume on Sunday.
"The negotiations on filling and operation of the GERD will resume on Sunday among ministers of water affairs in the three countries, to be chaired by Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa, the current chair of the African Union (AU)," said Sudan's Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources in a statement.
The three countries agreed to convene a meeting to submit a report to the AU within one week on means of achieving tangible progress in the talks which have stalled since August, it noted.
It added that the three countries have agreed to work during this week-long round to set up an agenda as well as timetable for the negotiations and a list of the outcomes to be reached with the help of the observers and experts in a manner that is different from the previous rounds.
"During the previous meeting, Sudan expressed rejection to the continuation of the talks with the previous method which led to a deadlock during the past rounds," Saleh Hamad, head of government's negotiating delegation, was quoted in the statement as saying.
"Sudan has proposed giving a bigger role to the experts and observers in the negotiation process to narrow the viewpoints among the three countries," it added.
Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been negotiating under the AU over technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.
Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce over 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the project to push the country's development forward.
Meanwhile, Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for water, are concerned that the dam might affect their Nile water share. Enditem
