Son of the former Egyptian leader before the deposed Hosni Mubarak, Abdel Hakim Gamal Abdel Nasser, who is one of the 48 member Egyptian public diplomacy delegation who visited Ethiopia, said that his country will not be against any project which benefits the Ethiopian people.
“We will be happy with a prosperous and developed Ethiopia,” Abdel Hakim said in an exclusive interview with WIC. “And we are sure that Ethiopian people will never do anything to harm the Egyptian people”.
The delegate said that the former regime was badly and wrongly expressing the feeling of the Egyptian people.
“Although it took us a long time, the previous regime is wiped out by the January 25th revolution, Egypt has now entered a new phase,” said the delegate who is an engineer by profession.
Speaking about the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam which Ethiopia has embarked on the Nile River, Abdel Hakim said that any dam could have positive and negative side.
“This has happened when we build the Aswan dam,” he said. “With the technology and the knowledge in the 21st century, Egyptian and Ethiopian scientists can come up with a scientific solution to maximize the positive and eliminate the negative side”.
According to the delegate, ordinary Egyptian peasants fear that the dam may prevent the flow of water due to the wrong messages of the previous regime.
“We should work together to kill this suspicion,” Abdel Hakim told WIC.
Bothaina Kamel, another delegate and the first woman presidential candidate for Egypt’s 2011 election, said that Egyptian peasants have suffered a lot during the previous regime.
“At present, Egyptian peasants suffer from water shortage,” she said. “This is because of the injustice of the previous government, not because of Ethiopia”.
The delegate said that they came to Addis Ababa to find where the truth lies about the impact of the dam.
“In our meeting with the Ethiopian government, we were told that the dam will be for the benefit of all of us,” said the delegate who was dressed in Ethiopian traditional cloth.
She said that previous leaders have made a lot of mistakes but now Egypt is determined to open a new chapter to strengthen relations with fellow African countries including Ethiopia.