President Abdel Fattah El Sisi said on Saturday he valued and appreciated an offer by US President Donald Trump to mediate a long-running dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Nile's waters.
In a Facebook post, the Egyptian leader said he has responded to a letter sent to him by the American leader by affirming Egypt's position and concerns about the country's water security in regard to Ethiopia's disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
On Friday, Mr Trump said in a letter to Mr El Sisi that he was ready to restart US mediation between Egypt and Ethiopia to resolve the dispute over the dam, which both Egypt and fellow downstream nation Sudan view as a serious threat to water supplies.
Egypt has long opposed the project, arguing that any reduction in its share of the Nile's waters will have a calamitous impact on its delicate food balance and wipe out hundreds of thousands of agricultural jobs.
Egypt, one of the world's driest nations, depends on the Nile for almost all its fresh water.
“I value President Trump's attention to the central importance of the Nile river issue for Egypt, as it represents the lifeline of the Egyptian people,” Mr El Sisi wrote to the US President.
Sudan, on the other hand, contends that Ethiopia's failure to share real-time information on the running of the dam has caused deadly flooding in parts of the country and posed structural threats to its smaller dams.
Sudan's army chief and de facto leader, Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, also welcomed Mr Trump's mediation offer on Saturday.
Ethiopia, the continent's second-most populous nation, with more than 120 million people, regards the $5 billion dam on a major tributary of the Nile as central to its economic ambitions. It has repeatedly rejected Egypt's claims that the dam will hurt its water supply.
Egypt and Sudan have held negotiations with Ethiopia on the dam over the past decade but have failed to persuade the Horn of Africa nations to enter a legally-binding deal on the running of the dam, completed last year.
The US mediated a deal to end the dispute over the dam during Mr Trump's first term in office (2017-2021) but Ethiopia declined to sign it at the last minute.
