Cairo, May 6 (IANS): Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel Aty held talks with US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman on the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) built on the Nile River.

In a statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said the meeting on Wednesday was held "in order to discuss the developments of the GERD file and the Egyptian position in this regard", Xinhua news agency reported.

It did not provide further details.

Recent tripartite negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have failed to reach a legally binding agreement on the rules of filling and operating the GERD.

Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project.

But Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the resources.

Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the UN, the European Union, the US and the AU regarding the GERD issue.

Ethiopia, however, has announced its rejection to this formula.

In February, Ethiopia had announced that it would carry on with the second-phase 13.5-billion-cubic-metre filling of the GERD in June.

The volume of the first-phase filling last year was 4.9 billion cubic metres.