Ministers and senior government officials from the ten Nile Basin countries will meet with donors and development agencies for the first-ever International Consortium for Cooperation on the Nile (ICCON) June 26-28 in Geneva.
The consortium is envisaged as a broad partnership between and among the Nile riparian states and the international community, according to a World Bank statement obtained by Albawaba.com.
The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), launched in 1999, is an undertaking of the ten Nile riparian countries - Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
The division of the Niile waters raises controversial issues from time to time.
Earlier this week, Egyptian Minister of Works and Water Resources Mahmoud Abu Zaid said that Ethiopia’s dams were not cutting into Egypt’s share of Nile water, and denied that Israel had helped set up any such dams.
Responding to a statement by independent lawmaker Mohammed Khalil Quaitah, the minister said there was full coordination among the Nile basin countries to make optimal use of the river water.
He added that Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia had formed a committee about three weeks ago.
The committee, he said, had toured all the Blue Nile areas on a fact-finding mission.
“The dam on (Ethiopia’s) Lake Tata was built in 1964 for electricity generation only, and not for water storage,” the minister said – Albawaba.com
