LONDON – Ethiopia, which along with other Nile upper riparian countries, has been accusing ‘Egypt of keeping an unequitable, colonial-era monopoly of the Nile water,’ has acknowledged Cairo’s right to keep its quota over Nile resources, the Egyptian weekly Al Ahram reported on Friday.
Although the accord was signed in Addis Ababa on December 30, no media reported about such issue of great national and regional significance until Al Ahram broke the news today.
“The Ethiopian compromise, publicly acknowledging Egypt’s right to its quota of Nile water, is an answer so obvious that one wonders why it was not on the table already. Now that it is, Ethiopia’s pragmatism may produce better results,” a buoyed Al Ahram said.
Political observers have over the years been suspicious of the move of Mr. Zenawi as his seemingly aggressive rhetoric against Cairo never matched his actions on the ground.
In power since 1991, the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has committed serious crimes that may easily qualify as “treasonous,” including pushing the United Nations to recognize Ethiopia as a landlocked nation in 1993, ceding a huge stretch of virgin forestland and farmlands to Khartoum in 2008-2009 (which was only known when Sudanese papers broke the news), up to the ongoing auctioning off Ethiopia’s farmlands to ‘foreign countries’ in secret deals.
In spite of the treasonous crimes, Ethiopians remain largely chained inside a big prison that Mr. Zenawi called “ethnic federalism.” If there is a glimmer of hope, a budding eight-party coalition called Forum (Medrek) and Ginbot Sebat movement, among others, may complement each other to weather the storm from Zenawi’s side, and rescue the long-tormented country.
