Egypt slammed statements by an Ethiopian government official for stating that Cairo has been seeking to hamper the construction of a giant dam on the Blue Nile to distract its people from internal problems
Dina Mufti, the former Ethiopian Ambassador to Egypt and Foreign Ministry Spokesman recently said that the Egyptian government uses the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to divert the attention f its people from internal problems
On Wednesday 30 December, the Egyptian foreign ministry said that the Ethiopian chargé d’affaires had been summoned to explain Mufti’s statements in which he touched on the Egyptian internal affairs.
Egypt “condemned these statements which are considered a blatant transgression,” reads a statement released by the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Ahmed Hafez on Thursday.
Hafez stressed that such an offence against his country is a continuation of the Ethiopian government’s approach aiming to use a hostile tone and fuelling emotions to cover its “multiple failures domestically and externally”.
He went further to speak to the ongoing internal troubles in the Tigray and Benishangul regions as well as the “constant tensions and instability in the Oromia region”. Also, he referred to the ongoing border tensions with Sudan.
On 31 December, the head of the Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah al-Burhan reacted to statements by the Spokesman of the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry who said that Sudanese army had carried out inside Ethiopia.
The Sudanese armed forces “have not and will not cross international borders or attack neighbouring Ethiopia,” said al-Burhan.
Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have to resume meetings on the GERD in the upcoming days in a long process that has been continuing for nine years.
