Ethiopia willing to negotiate with Egypt over dam: Ambassador

Ethiopia's ambassador in Egypt, Mahmoud Dardeer, has stressed that his country is serious about starting a new round of negotiations with Egypt over the Grand Renaissance Dam, state news agency MENA reported.
 
Dardeer told MBC Misr that the dam controversy would not be solved through talk in the media, and said that the upcoming period would witness positive changes between the two countries.
 
The ambassador then asserted that the two countries would hold talks on the issue at the African Union Summit in Equatorial Guinea later this month.
 
Meanwhile, Egypt`s newly inaugurated president, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, on Monday discussed the dam with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom.
 
In their meeting, Adhanom invited El-Sisi to visit his country in order to improve relations by planning cooperative developments.
 
The under-construction dam is situated near the Sudanese border on the Blue Nile, a Nile tributary. It is set to be the biggest hydroelectric dam in Africa, producing as much as 6,000 megawatts of energy.
 
Egypt has repeatedly expressed its concern that the dam will affect its share of the Nile's water.