WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have agreed to reconvene in Washington later this month to finalize an agreement on a giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile that sparked a diplomatic crisis between Cairo and Addis Ababa. They will meet again in Washington on Jan. 28-29 to finalize the agreement with technical and legal discussions, the statement said. Cairo fears the dam, announced in 2011 and under construction on the Blue Nile near Ethiopia's border with Sudan, will restrict supplies of already scarce Nile waters on which its population of more than 100 million people is almost entirely dependent. Addis Ababa denies the dam will undermine Egypt's access to water and says the project is crucial to its economic development, as it aims to become Africa's biggest power exporter with a projected capacity of more than 6,000 megawatts. (Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Chris Reese and Richard Chang)

Source: Ethiopian News January 15, 2020 21:33 UTC