02:19 PM
Saturday, March 11, 2023
Books – Ahmed Massad:
Dr. Abbas Sharaki, a professor of geology at Cairo University, revealed scenarios for reaching an agreement on the issue of the Renaissance Dam.
Sharaqi said, through his Facebook account: Ethiopia is preparing for the fourth storage next August by increasing the height of the Renaissance Dam by about 20 meters to store about 13 billion cubic meters, so that the total of the four storages is 30 billion cubic meters, and the Ethiopian preparations are considered the sixth violation of international agreements and norms, and this is what it rejects. Egypt and Sudan.
Sharaki added: The statements of the Egyptian Foreign Minister in the League of Arab States express the seriousness of what Ethiopia is doing, especially since the fourth stockpiling is equivalent to 75% of the total stockpiled during the past three years.
He explained that Ethiopia’s reaction to reject the Arab League’s decision in March 2020 is not the first of its kind, as it had previously rejected the Arab League’s decision to support Egypt and Sudan’s water right, which came after the failure of the Washington negotiations in February 2020, and issued an official statement rejecting the intervention of the Arab League, as statements insisted. Others reject the intervention of the Security Council.
And he continued: There are two scenarios, the first is urging the African Union, under its new leadership headed by the Comoros, to carry out its responsibilities to resume negotiations as soon as possible to reach an agreement before the start of the fourth storage, and the second scenario is that Egypt and Sudan went to the Security Council for a third time, but this time not because of a water problem, but rather an existential problem and a threat to Peace and security, especially for the 20 million Sudanese who live on the banks of the Blue Nile, who will be exposed to a flood in the event of the collapse of the Renaissance Dam, especially since Ethiopia has exaggerated the increase in the specifications of the dam from 11.1 billion cubic meters as it was in the original American design to 74 billion cubic meters.
He pointed out that what compounds the problem is Ethiopia’s failure to conduct engineering studies as was planned according to the Declaration of Principles of the Renaissance Dam 2015 in the fifth item, and what happened in Turkey is the best evidence of the danger of dams in seismic places.