CAIRO: Egypt's Minster of Water Resources and Irrigation, Hisham Qandeel, reiterated on Friday, Egypt's firm stance of rejecting signing the Entebbe Agreement unless the water security of Egypt and the Sudan is achieved, and until reaching a consensus on the agreement by all the Nile Basin countries. Egypt believes that cooperation between the Nile Basin countries can continue and that there are promising opportunities for integration, cooperation and partnership for all sides, he added affirming that the Nile water is enough for all the riparian nations if it is used well. Meanwhile, he said that Ethiopia has unilaterally announced that it will construct the Renaissance Dam and affirmed that the dam did not and will never have any bad impact on Egypt and the Sudan pointing out that the Ethiopian dam can be an axis of development between Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia besides its positive impact on the Sudan. He noted that a national team of the ministry is already conducting technical studies over the dam through the tripartite committee that comprises Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia. Water management issues are considered a matter of national security in Egypt. Discussions on water management are administered by an organization called the Nile Basin Initiative, of which Egypt, the Sudan and other nations using water from the Nile, are members. Water sharing agreements are now part of a decades-old colonial era distribution of water that is out-dated by most analysis.
