Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said his country firmly believes that cooperation is the foundation of mutual respect and the only path to achieving shared benefits.
In his address to the UN General Assembly on Saturday evening, Abdelatty stressed that experience has shown unilateral actions only deepen crises and widen divides.
He added that “Ethiopia has violated international law and imposed a fait accompli through its unilateral policies that threaten stability in the Horn of Africa and the Eastern Nile Basin. By announcing the completion of its Grand Renaissance Dam, Ethiopia is deluded into thinking that Egypt will abandon its rights and interests in the Nile,” according to Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper.
Abdelatty reaffirmed Egypt’s readiness to take the dispute to international judicial and arbitration mechanisms if there is genuine intent to do so. He warned, however, that “procrastination and threatening the lives of millions in downstream states will not deter Egypt from defending its rights.”
He concluded by asserting that “Egypt is capable of protecting its existential interests in the Nile River, based on the UN Charter and the principles of international law.”
Separately, Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Hani Sewilam, said that “Ethiopia withheld large amounts of Nile water allocated to Egypt and Sudan during the years of filling the Grand Renaissance Dam, without consultation or reaching a prior agreement with the downstream countries.” He stressed that “this water would have reached Egypt and Sudan if it had not been withheld by Ethiopia’s storage operations.”
In an interview with the Egyptian channel Al-Nahar, Sewilam explained that “the Egyptian state has taken precautionary measures that strengthened its ability to address the repercussions of these reductions,” emphasizing that “the daily release of water from the High Dam to meet the needs of citizens is managed according to precise calculations that leave no room for error.”
He confirmed that “these measures prevented Egyptian citizens from being directly affected by the harm caused by Ethiopia’s actions.”
