KHARTOUM, July 28 (Xinhua) -- Director of Egypt's General Intelligence Service Abbas Kamel on Tuesday held talks with Sudanese leaders to review the developments related to the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Kamel met with Chairman of the Sudanese Sovereign Council Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan at the presidential palace in Khartoum and conveyed to him a verbal message from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the council said in a statement.

The meeting reviewed the developments in the GERD and the efforts being made to overcome the differences in the spirit of dialogue to resolve the dispute, it noted.

Kamel also held separate meetings with Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Deputy Chairman of the Sovereign Council Mohamed Hamdan Daqlu, it added.

On Monday, Sudan's Irrigation and Water Resources Ministry announced postponement of the new round of talks on the GERD for a week for further consultations.

Sudan expressed once again its reservation over Ethiopia's unilateral move to start the filling of the dam before reaching a binding agreement by the three countries.

Khartoum regarded the Ethiopian move as a harmful and worrying precedent in the path of cooperation between the concerned countries.

A mini-African summit was convened on July 21 through video link, where the parties agreed to continue talks to narrow viewpoints.

Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce over 6,000 megawatts of electricity to push the development in the country forward.

But Egypt, a downstream Nile Basin country that relies on the river for its fresh water, is concerned that the dam might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the water resources. Enditem

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