Anger Upstream on the Nile

"Upstream countries, looking to right what they say are historic wrongs, have joined in an attempt to break Egypt and Sudan's near-monopoly on the water, threatening a crisis that Egyptian experts said could, at its most extreme, lead to war.

'Not only is Egypt the gift of the Nile, this is a country that is almost completely dependent on Nile water resources,' said a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, Hossam Zaki. 'We have a growing population and growing needs. There is no way we can accept this kind of threat.'"

Seven upstream countries who have been profhibited from using the water in the same way as Egypt are calling for those colonial-era rules to be re-written.