By Yonas Abiye

Addis Ababa, April 5, 2011 (Ezega.com) - Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Tuesday accused Medrek of planning and instigating violence in Ethiopia.

While presenting an eight month government’s performance reportto parliament, Meles responded to questions posed by Girma Seyfu, the sole opposition member of parliament, about the mass arrest of opposition members.

“The Ethiopian government is neither blind nor deaf. You don’t have to think as if we did not know anything,” Meles said adding that the government has refrained from releasing the list of detaineesand suspected OLF members by police until the opposition parties did it.

“Now that the opposition have made public the list of the detainees, it means that the opposition is testifying that all OLF members who are detained are their members. In other words, they proved by themselves that the opposition is the hiding place for OLF”.

“We even know that OLF members have been here with us for five years at this house (parliament). We knew everything, but we didn’t take them to court as we did not have substantial evidence. Now, the opposition parties have proved it.”Meles said to the country’s lawmakers.

The opposition’s party Medrek, particularly Unity for Democracy and Justice, is orchestrating to instigate violence and protest in the country. However, Meles did not give more details about the matter.

“We would like to make it clear that the opposition cannot go long by being a cover of anti-peace elements,” he added.

Meles was also speaking about Ethiopian new strategy on Eritrea.

He told the parliament that Ethiopia would not tolerate Eritrean government’s destructive policy anymore and the country is forced to change its policy from “passive defiance” to directly help Eritrean people topple the regime.

He, however, confirmed that Ethiopia has no intention of invading Eritrea or opening a new war.

According to the prime minister, Eritrean government has continued its attempt to destabilize Ethiopia by deploying terrorists and home grown “destructive forces”, such as the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF),  as well as the Somalia extremists group, Al shabab.

He underscored that “Until now, our strategy has been defending our sovereignty by speeding up our development. Now, we found that we cannot go any longer with passive defense. It’ is not possible to take passive defense as the only alternative.”

“Therefore, we have to facilitate ways for Eritrean people to remove its dictatorial regime. We have no intention to jump into their country but we need to extend our influence there. If Eritrean government tries to attack us, we will also respond proportionally,” Meles added.

Meles also criticized the Egyptian government’s influence of what he said is Egypt’sbacking of Eritrean and other terrorists to encourage them to destabilize Ethiopian as part of its long time strategy to deter Ethiopia’s development on the Nile river.

“Recently, Eritrea is training and deploying, Al shabab and locally grown destructive forces to terrorize our country. But Egypt is the direct force behind these destructive elements that back them,” he told lawmakers. He added “In order to prevent any development on Blue Nile River, Egypt and Eritrea have created their own front.”

He also called on Egyptian people to realize that Ethiopia is not their enemy, citing that Ethiopian newly plan to build the grand dam on Nile river will also benefit the downstream countries.