Bashir orders 5,000 cows as gift from Sudan to Egypt ahead of PM visit
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March 26, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese president Omer Hassan
Al-Bashir granted Egypt 5.000 cows as a gift ahead of the visit on
Sunday by the Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.
JPEG - 36.4 kb
Cows are seen before they are slaughtered at an abattoir near Khartoum
March 26, 2011 (Reuters)
Sudan official news agency (SUNA) quoted foreign ministry spokesperson
Khalid Moussa as saying that this was pledged during Bashir’s visit to
Cairo earlier this month. Bashir was the first Arab ruler to visit
Egypt following the removal of president Hosni Mubarak through a
popular uprising that started in late January.
"During his last trip to Egypt (at the beginning of March), President
Omar al-Bashir announced that he would give the Egyptians 5,000 cows
as a present," Moussa told Agence France Presse (AFP).
"We will start sending the cows on Monday. There will be a ceremony
beforehand at Al-Kadaru in north Khartoum," he added.
The London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat cited observers who said that this
gift by Bashir was as celebration to the end of Mubarak’s era who
ruled Egypt since 1981.
The government sponsored Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website today
launched a fierce attack on Mubarak’s regime saying it practiced
blackmailing against Khartoum since the failed attempt on Egyptian
president’s life in Addis Ababa in 1995 blamed on Islamists backed by
Sudan.
It also said that the Cairo under Mubarak occupied the disputed
Halayeb triangle on the borders, pushed the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) to impose sanctions on Sudan and hosted opposition
groups in the 90’s that were seeking to topple Bashir’s government.
The Egyptian PM will be accompanied by the ministers of agriculture,
electricity, irrigation and international cooperation. He is expected
to visit Khartoum and Juba.
Talks will likely focus on the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) which would
strip Egypt of its veto right over all upstream projects including
irrigation and hydropower. Sudan has stood firmly in rejecting any
amendment to the original treaty.
Egypt held dominant right on Nile water following powers granted by a
1929 colonial-era treaty with Britain. Its subsequent 1959 deal with
Sudan gave the two downstream countries more than 90 percent control
of Nile waters.
The NBI signed in May 2010 by Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia
will curb that right. Other affected countries, including Kenya,
Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were given one year
to ink the deal.
Kenya signed shortly after the ceremony and Burundi signed earlier
this month, the last possible day for signature.
Egypt says the river’s waters feed a farming sector accounting for a
third of all jobs. Cairo fears a reduction in its water flow will
bring closer the date on which population growth will outstrip water
resources, now thought possible as early as 2017.
Under the original deal, Egypt is entitled to 55.5 billion cubic
meters of water a year, the lion’s share of the Nile’s total flow of
around 84 billion cubic meters.
(ST)
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