African Countries Debate Water Usage

Ministers from 10 countries are in talks in Uganda to avert a political crisis based on water flowing from the Nile River, The Times of London reported today.

The emergency meeting was called after Tanzania announced a $30 million project last month to draw water from Lake Victoria for a million peasant families in western Tanzania.

Egypt and Sudan are adamantly opposed to the project, and point to a 1929 agreement between colonial Britain and Egypt that stipulates without the express permission of Egypt, none of the countries on the banks of the Nile could initiate any project that would affect the volume of flow.

Cairo has said it would regard any attempt to alter the Nile status as an act of war, and threatened to bomb Ethiopia if it goes ahead with plans to use the waters of the Blue Nile for irrigation projects in its drought-ravaged lowlands.

Last year Kenya called for the treaty to be revised, but all efforts to negotiate a more equitable arrangement have failed. Tanzania says the 1929 treaty and a 1959 update are illegal, as the modern, sovereign states of the region were not consulted.

Source: United Press International