CAIRO — Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry held a phone call June 25 with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, briefing the latter on the latest development of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) crisis.

A statement by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry was released the same day, saying the call between the two senior diplomats involved a “long and in-depth conversation on the GERD at all levels.”

China’s involvement in the dam issue came in the wake of Shoukry’s letter June 12 that he addressed to the United Nations Security Council president, in which he objected to Ethiopia’s announcement that it would initiate the filling of the dam during the flood season in July.

In a speech delivered May 31 during a virtual symposium held by the Chinese Embassy in Cairo on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Cairo and Beijing, Omar Semeida, the head of the Conference Party and head of the party’s parliamentary bloc in the Senate, called on China to “exercise more diplomatic pressure on the Ethiopian government in a bid to spare the entire region any risk of instability and to sign a legally binding agreement with the downstream countries, i.e., Sudan and Egypt.”