Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, photographed in Washington, D.C., on July 30, 2025.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Says Red Sea Security Belongs Only to Coastal States After Talks With Somalia, as Ethiopia’s Water Minister Calls Cairo’s Stand a “Contradiction”

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Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, told his Somali counterpart in Libya on Saturday that the security and management of the Red Sea remain the exclusive responsibility of the countries that border it, according to Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, as Ethiopia’s water and energy minister told the state news agency that it was “a contradiction” for Egypt to claim rights in the Red Sea while insisting that Ethiopia stay landlocked.

Abdelatty met Somali Foreign Minister Abdisalam Abdi Ali and Djibouti’s foreign minister, Abdoulkader Houssein Omar, separately on Nov. 7 in Tripoli, on the sidelines of the 22nd session of the Executive Council of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, known as CEN-SAD. In Egypt’s account of the Somali meeting, reported by Hiiraan Online and the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, Abdelatty said that “security and management of the Red Sea remain the exclusive responsibility of the states bordering it” (our translation from Arabic), restated Cairo’s rejection of any unilateral steps that could undermine Somalia’s territorial unity, and agreed with Abdi Ali to keep coordinating and to build on the outcome of the Alamein summit Egypt hosted in October.

After the Djibouti meeting, Abdelatty wrote on X that he had “discussed with Djibouti’s FM economic cooperation, Horn of Africa developments & Red Sea security,” and See News reported that he called for closer coordination among the countries on the Red Sea coast and stressed their role in its security and governance. Somalia’s own account did not repeat the “exclusive responsibility” line. Somalia’s foreign ministry said on X only that its minister took part in the CEN-SAD session and that Somalia had “reaffirmed its commitment to stronger cooperation between the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and North Africa,” without mentioning the meeting with Abdelatty or the Red Sea.

The Egyptian position follows a joint declaration issued on Oct. 4 in El Alamein by the leaders of Egypt, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan, who said the countries on the Red Sea should lead efforts to secure it, Garowe Online and the Horn Economic Review reported, and both outlets noted that no new military agreement or joint action aimed at Ethiopia was announced after the Tripoli talks. Egypt and Sudan had also said in a joint statement in Cairo on Nov. 2 that Red Sea governance should rest only with coastal states and rejected sea access for countries without a coast at the expense of coastal states’ sovereignty, according to The Abay Times.

In an interview with the Ethiopian News Agency published on Sunday, Habtamu Itefa, Ethiopia’s minister of water and energy, said Egypt had for decades tried to stop Ethiopia from using the Nile for its development and that building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam had ended that. “Ethiopia has been able to break that line of thinking by building the GERD. We have closed that chapter,” he said, according to the text of the interview carried by allAfrica. He said Ethiopia contributes 86 percent of the river’s total flow, claimed that downstream flow had stayed steady with water still reaching Egypt after passing through the dam’s turbines, and accused Cairo of building the Toshka and New Valley schemes without consulting upstream states while charging Ethiopia with acting alone.

Habtamu also claimed that Egypt had partly succeeded in cutting Ethiopia off from the Red Sea by backing Eritrea’s separation under the EPRDF-led government, and he pointed to the fact that the UN secretary-general at the time, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was Egyptian. “Historically, Ethiopia had access to the sea. It is a contradiction to claim Egypt has rights in the Red Sea while insisting Ethiopia must remain landlocked,” he said, and he urged Cairo to stop lobbying against Ethiopia’s port ambitions and to back an arrangement that serves regional stability.

The minister’s account left out matters that Ethiopia’s neighbors raise. Eritrea became independent in 1993 after a referendum, and Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have never concluded a legally binding agreement on how the dam is filled and run, The Abay Times noted in its report on the interview, while Egypt and Sudan called the dam a persistent threat in their Nov. 2 statement. Earlier, on Nov. 5, Habtamu had tied any understanding on the Nile to Egyptian help in getting Ethiopia a sea outlet, and Egyptian coverage on Nov. 6 rejected that as an unacceptable “Nile for the sea” bargain, The Abay Times reported. Zegabi found no response from Egypt’s Foreign Ministry to the minister’s latest remarks by Monday morning, and the Ethiopian government has not said whether it raised the Tripoli statements with Cairo, Mogadishu or Djibouti.

On X, the minister’s remarks and the Egyptian line drew sharp answers from Ethiopian and Egyptian accounts. Yonas Ethio (@yonast98) wrote on Sunday that “Egypt keeps travelling from meeting to meeting to explain why Ethiopia should stay away from the Red Sea,” adding: “Egypt has a coastline. It does not own the Red Sea, and it does not hold the keys to Ethiopia’s future.” The Egyptian news site Egypt KE (@EgyptKE3), in a commentary posted on Saturday about the minister’s Nov. 5 offer, said that “Cairo cannot accept this swap or deal under any circumstances,” because “water, for Egypt, is not a commodity open to negotiation, sale or barter, but a matter of survival and existence” (our translation from Arabic). Separately, Getachew (@GetachewFa5067), whose Amharic bio reads “standing for the country with conviction,” wrote in Tigrigna on Sunday, in a post addressed to Eritrea that did not mention Egypt or the minister, that “from now on, Ethiopia will not accept Eritrea’s policy of hostility and envy reflected in the port of Assab” and that Assab “must be a bridge of shared prosperity, not a monument to political hostility” (our translation).

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