CAIRO - President Hosni Mubarak said yesterday Egypt would never provide any other country outside its borders with Nile water, and urged the Government to better use water of the world's longest river
“Nile water will never allowed outside Egypt's borders,” the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) quoted Mubarak as saying Saturday.
The Egyptian leader, whose country and its southern neighbour Sudan are leading a diplomatic battle with other Nile Basin countries, did not name any country who requested to get Nile water.
However, reports have been recently rife over Israeli negotiations with the Nile riparian countries to get a quota of the river's waters in exchange for funding some water and development projects in these countries. Both sides deny the reports.
Israel officially asked Egypt's late president Anwar el-Sadat to provide them with Nile water in the late 1970s, almost a year after the two countries signed a peace treaty .
