Ethiopia Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegene said on Saturday that his country will not accept any arbitration by a third party on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). In statements to the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), Desalegene said that the three countries involved in negotiations over the dam (Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia) are able to resolve possible disputes by themselves. Desalegene’s remarks are seen as a retraction of recent statements he made regarding the possibility to include the World Bank as a neutral party in the negotiations. In his most recent comments on the issue, he asserted that Ethiopia will not accept Egypt’s request to include the World Bank in the tripartite technical committee’s talks on GERD. So we told them that this is not acceptable with our side,” Desalegene said.

Source: Egypt Independent January 21, 2018 09:33 UTC