Egypt president Hosni Mubarak has refuted accusations that his country is backing Ethiopian’s rebel group to fight against Meles Zenawi regime.

President Hosni Mubarak said he was surprised to hear of the allegation suggested by the Ethiopia Prime Minister Meles Zanawi on Tuesday.

Meles Zenawi accused Egyptian authorities of supporting his country's rebels as to destabilize the Horn of Africa nation but Egypt had replied the words come as the two countries had a good relationship.

"This is the first time we hear that we support any group in any country. This is not something we do with any nation and this is not our form of conduct," Mubarak told a state-run al-Ahram newspaper.

Ethiopia and Egypt dispute over access to the waters of the Nile is growing as Ethiopia wants to take more water from it.

But meles said that Egypt could not win a war with Ethiopia over the Nile water that Egypt indicated as amazed suggestion that Cairo might turn to military action in a row over the Nile waters, saying it did not want confrontation.

"We have very amicable relations with Ethiopia. I was surprised by these comments because this is something we cannot do with any Arab or African country," Mubarak said.

However, Ethiopian’s state minister for communications Shimeles Kemal had repeated that Egypt recently aided rebel movements in the country.

Ethiopia has evidence that Egypt recently aided rebel movements in the country, said the State Minister for Communications, Shimeles Kemal.

“We have solid evidence that Egypt is giving covert assistance to rebel groups,” Shimeles said. “We will disclose the timing and identify the groups at the right time,” he added.

Egypt, Ethiopia and seven other countries through which the river passes have been locked in more than a decade of contentious talks driven by anger over the perceived injustice of a previous Nile water treaty signed in 1929.

That agreement between Egypt and Britain - the regional power at that time - gives Egypt most of the Nile's water and Egypt has said it cannot afford to give up this claim because of the needs of its own booming population.

Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya signed a new deal to share the waters in May, provoking Egypt to call it a "national security" issue.

The five countries’ new deal has given the other Nile Basin countries one year to join the pact before putting it into action. But Sudan has supported Egypt while Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi have so far rejected to sign.

Egypt, almost totally dependent on the Nile and threatened by climate change, is closely watching hydroelectric dam construction in the upstream countries.

Ethiopia has built five huge dams over the last decade and has begun construction on a new $1.4 billion hydropower facility -- the biggest in Africa.