Monday, March 11, 2013 @ 04:03 PM ed
By Prof. Almayehu G. Mariam
Dam War of Words
Late last month, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy
Defense Minister Prince Khalid Bin Sultan fired a shot across the bow
from the Arab Water Council in Cairo to let the regime in Ethiopia know
that his country takes a dim view of the “Grand Renaissance Dam” under
“construction” on the Blue Nile (Abbay) a few miles from Sudan’s eastern
border. According to Prince Khalid, “The [Grand] Renaissance dam has
its capacity of flood waters reaching more than 70 billion cubic meters
of water… [I]f it collapsed Khartoum will be drowned completely and the
impact will even reach the Aswan Dam…” The Prince believes the Dam is
being built close to the “Sudanese border for political plotting rather
than for economic gain and constitutes a threat to Egyptian and Sudanese
national security…” The Prince raised the stakes by accusing the regime
in Ethiopia of being hell-bent on harming Arab peoples. “There are
fingers messing with water resources of Sudan and Egypt which are rooted
in the mind and body of Ethiopia. They do not forsake an opportunity to
harm Arabs without taking advantage of it…”
A spokesman for the regime in power
in Ethiopia sought to minimize the importance of the Prince’s statement
by suggesting that the Saudi Ambassador in Addis Ababa had disavowed
the Prince’s statement as official policy or a position endorsed by the
Saudi government. The alleged disavowal of the statement of a member of
the Saudi royal family and top defense official seems curiously
disingenuous after the fact. But that is understandable since “an
ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his
country.” The regime spokesman also insinuated in fuzzy diplomatese that
such inflammatory statements could result in war between Arab countries
and African countries in the Nile basin. Please read the whole analyses from the link http://addisvoice.com/2013/03/rumors-of-water-war-on-the-nile/
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