Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia met in New Alamein on 4 October. Their joint declaration, published by Egypt's presidency, sets out shared positions on the Red Sea and Nile and promises a mechanism to follow up future consultations.
The document says Red Sea governance belongs to coastal states. It opposes unilateral river measures that harm downstream water uses. These are the signatories' stated positions, not legal conclusions independently reached by Dahsas.
More than a photograph, less than a war pact
The Egyptian Gazette's account of the presidential briefing says the meeting also stressed navigation safety around the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab, alongside sovereignty and peaceful settlement of disputes. It attributes that account to the host's spokesman: it is not a separate witness to private negotiations.
Eritrea's information ministry provides the preceding day's view from Asmara. It reports that Isaias Afwerki met Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on 3 October and emphasised their agreement on sovereignty and non-interference. That is a participant's account of a bilateral meeting, not independent evidence of what all four leaders decided the following day.
Our reading is that bringing these issues into one recurring forum gives the participants a common diplomatic platform. It does not follow that they share an operational command, have agreed troop deployments, or are supplying a party to Ethiopia's war. Those would require different evidence.
Do not mistake diplomacy for an investigation
Separately, the AU Commission has clarified that its regional appeal did not assign blame to neighbouring states. That neither establishes nor disproves outside involvement.
The next useful evidence would be an implementing agreement, named commitments and independently documented actions. A declaration records what governments choose to say together. The test is what they subsequently do.