Ethiopia has told Sudan that news reports that it had started filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam reservoir on the Blue Nile were incorrect, Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
Ethiopian Water Minister Seleshi Bekele said on Wednesday in televised comments, of which a transcript was given to Reuters by his office, that “the construction of the dam and the filling of the water go hand in hand”.
“The filling of the dam doesn’t need to wait until the completion of the dam,” he added.
However, the Sudanese statement quoted the Ethiopian envoy as saying that the minister “did not make the comments attributed to him yesterday about starting the process of filling the dam”.