By Martin Plaut BBC Africa analyst

Some people from the highlands are moving to cities in search of jobs

The programme is controversial - last year's pilot project left children dying in poorly prepared resettlement camps in numbers that would have been declared an emergency in other circumstances.

And aid agencies worry that few lessons have been learnt from last year's experience.

Over the next three years Ethiopia plans to move more than two million people.

And it is not hard to see why.

The country faces enormous challenges: its central highlands have been over-worked for generations; its population has doubled since the great famine of 1974.

Something has to be done.

Wasting disease

The trouble is that the lands that are available for resettlement are far from most people's traditional homes, and in areas that are notorious for their diseases.

Most land is along the border with Sudan - swampy in places, frequently malarial and sometimes rife with Kalazar - a deadly wasting disease, carried by sand flies.

Zenawi does not want an influx of people into towns

Aid agencies are deeply worried that mistakes made during last year's pilot projects, when 150,000 people were moved, will simply be repeated.

Resettlement sites were poorly prepared.

The information given to people was often over-optimistic - promising schools, health clinics, water and sanitation - which frequently failed to materialise.

One camp worked well at first, but then was cut off for six months by rains.

Up to 70 people died.

The problem for Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is that many highland people are so desperate they are voting with their feet.

Some 25,000 people simply walked into the Bale National Park, as a way of finding somewhere to make a living.

And there is the constant threat that hundreds of thousands will leave their tiny plots and head for the cities - intensifying the overcrowding and threatening social unrest.

Aid agencies argue that resettlement is not bad, but needs effective preparation and support if it is to succeed.