The United Nations has added its voice to the barrage of criticism on Ethiopia’s massive Gibe III hydropower project, calling for work to be suspended until the negative impacts of the dam have been determined.The World Heritage Committee, which establishes sites to be listed as being of special cultural or physical significance, said the dam’s construction endangered the existence of Lake Turkana.But Ethiopia has categorically denied the accusation and further signed an agreement with Kenya to export electric power. The transmission line connecting the two countries is nearing completion.During an international hydropower summit in Addis Ababa recently, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi defended the decision to expand dam projects.The views of western critics are ironic as Ethiopian facilities are infinitely more environmentally and socially responsible than the projects in their countries, past and present,” he said.Mr Meles articulated his suspicion that there is a conspiracy against hydropower projects in Africa and that those who were advocating against hydropower electricity generation were condemning Africa and its people to remain in extreme poverty.”They are concerned about butterflies’ lives, but not human diseases,” he said.The Ethiopian premier said that most of the activists residing in Europe and North America were not condemning their countries for causing global warming by producing carbon emission gases.Mr Meles is the current African Union spokesperson on climate change.