Egypt’s new ambassador to Ethiopia, Mohamed Edris, said on Thursday that he expects Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s visit to Egypt to mark a new phase in Egyptian-Ethiopian relations. The visit is to take place on 17 September and will be the first since Egypt’s January 25 revolution.

Edris told the Middle East news Agency (MENA) that he is set to travel to Ethiopia on Friday, and plans to broaden relations between the two countries by creating joint projects in the fields of health, science and the economy. The ambassador also said that he will follow up on the implementation of an agreement reached earlier this summer between Prime Minister Essam Sharaf's and Ethiopian authorities to form a tripartite committee between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to assess the potential impact of Ethiopia's Nahda Dam on water shares for other Nile basin countries.

Zenawi is expected to meet with the head of Egypt's ruling military council Hussein Tantawi, Prime Minister Sharaf and Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, as well as several businessmen and political analysts concerned with Ethiopian-Egyptian relations.