Arab League Expresses Full Support for Egypt, Sudan on GERD Issue

The Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that the Arab foreign ministers expressed their full support for Egypt and Sudan in the issue of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Aboul Gheit said in a press conference that the Arab countries will press for an urgent session of the UN Security Council to discuss the decade-long dispute.

Arab foreign ministers on Tuesday backed calls for the UNSC to intervene in the controversial issue of the Grand Ethiopian dam being built on a major tributary of the Nile. The decision came during a diplomatic meeting in Qatar called by downstream countries Egypt and Sudan.

The Doha meeting came after years of negotiations between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. Egypt and Sudan had previously called on the U.S., the European Union (EU) and the UN to join the talks as mediators, alongside the African Union (AU), however, Ethiopia rejected the bid, ahead of the planned second filling of the dam.

"There is a unified Arab position. Water security is about the survival of humanity and for the peoples of Sudan and Egypt," Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said at the press conference, which was attended by 17 foreign ministers from the region.

On Friday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said it had sent a letter to the Security Council to explain its position on the controversial dam, accusing Ethiopia of not having the political will to reach a fair, legal and binding agreement.

GERD is expected to hold one year worth of the Nile River flow, 74 billion cubic meters, which will have disastrous consequences on both Egypt and Sudan on the long run. The dam is build on a former Egyptian-Sudanese Territory Benishangul-Gumuz, and according to the 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian agreement, Ethiopia has no legal rights to build any projects on the Nile without the acceptance of both Egypt and Sudan.