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dam-l Sharing Nile water/LS
Environment and Development
Nile States Agree On Shared Vision of Nile
Waters
Panafrican News Agency
May 14, 1999
by Ghion Hagos
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (PANA) - The 10 Nile
river riparian states have decided to bolster confidence building
measures to realize their shared vision
for equitable utilisation of the Nile waters for development and poverty
alleviation.
They also recognized the rights of each
riparian state to use the resources of the Nile and its tributaries within
its
boundary for development and accepted this
as their guiding principle.
At the end of their two-day conference
Thursday night in Addis Ababa, water affairs ministers agreed on
transitional
institutional arrangements leading to a
final "framework cooperation" for the equitable utilisation of the Nile
water
resources.
The ministers further agreed to strengthen
the Nile secretariat head office in Entebbe, Uganda, with the necesssary
manpower.
The conference chairman, Ethiopian
minister of water resources, Shiferaw Jarsso, told the closing session of
the 7th
annual conference of the Nile Council of
Ministers (Nile Com) that the gathering had set in motion the mechanism
for transforming "the shared vision
programme" from planning to action.
He said the ministerial session has
instructed its Technical Advisory Committee (Nile Tac) "to proceed with the
preparation of terms of reference for
consultants and to come up with specific project proposals."
The ministers also agreed on the process
that will take them to the meeting of International Consortium for
Cooperation on the Nile (ICCOM) within a
few years.
"We shall continue to work closely with
our development partners," the chairman said. These are the World Bank,
the United Nations Development Programme
and the Canadian International Development Agency.
The former chairman, Tanzania's water
minister Mussa Nkhangaa said that constructive dialogue for enhancing trust
among states prevailed during the meeting.
He stated that the session brought to
light the importance for the riparian states to have a shared vision, build
confidence and trust among themselves in
working towards an equitable utilisation of the Nile waters for the benefit
of all.
The Nile secretariat at Entebbe has been
entrusted with the task of coordinating the activities of Nile Com and Nile
Tac towards realising the objective of the
shared vision of the Nile river basin initiative.
Copyright (c) 1999 Panafrican News Agency.
Distributed via Africa News Online (www.africanews.org). For
information about the content or for
permission to redistribute, publish or use for broadcast, contact the
publish
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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