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Russia presents army reforms, sees professional soldiers as backbone

MOSCOW, Nov 21 (AFP) - Russia formally gave up hope Thursday of eliminating military conscription within the coming decade and instead came up with a reform plan setting up a small but fully professional force as the backbone of the country's defenses by 2007.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov presented a long-delayed proposal for reforming the country's overstaffed but poorly-equipped armed forces, a task given to him by President Vladimir Putin after being appointed last year.

The program must still be formally approved by the government at a meeting likely to take place next spring.

Ivanov lifted the veil on how Russia plans to emerge from its post-Soviet military malaise by highlighting reliance on a new Western-style professional core that is backed by the threat of its nuclear army and space-based intelligence gathering.

"Our priority is to place under contract some parts of our permanently-ready ground troops, paratrooper divisions and the navy infantry," Ivanov told reporters after a government meeting at which he revealed the Contentious plan.

Ivanov said a new professional force of some 166,000 servicemen -- just a fraction of the estimated 1.1 million currently enlisted in the armed forces -- "will become the main force of the army."

These troops will include 126,000 soldiers and sergeants in addition to 40,000 officers.

"Switching to a contract basis in four years is an ambitious program -- but one that we can accomplish," Ivanov told reporters.

He added that Russia could now afford a smaller force that takes part in conflicts like the current three-year war in Chechnya "because we are not currently facing a large-scale military threat."

Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin have taken repeated stabs at reforming the military -- known as much for its brutal hazing practices and low morale as it is as a fighting force that inherited the once-feared Soviet military machine.

Yeltsin promised during his 1996 re-election campaign to abolish the unpopular conscription by 2000. The plan was shelved two years later amid bitter opposition from army general who appear unwilling to face the risk of dismissal in a new pared-down military.

Putin himself originally proposed to eliminate conscription by the end of the decade.

But Ivanov -- seen as one of Putin's most-trusted government ministers -- formally shelved those plans Thursday by announcing that Russia can only expect to see about half of its force rely on professional troops by the year

That date would complete the second stage of Russian military reform that would see 50 to 60 percent of the military composed of professional soldiers.

Ivanov also loosely outlined a third and final stage that would wholly eliminate conscription. But he gave no date when those reforms might be completed.

Analysts suggests that Ivanov faces an enormous uphill struggle to push through his new reform plan.

A Russian general close to several former defense ministers who attempted to sweep away the Soviet-era cobwebs in the general staff recently said that these efforts were halted by resistance from the old guard.

Western military sources said that similar efforts by the governments of Britain and Germany to set up Western-paid retraining programs for Russian soldiers made redundant by cutbacks have been given the cold shoulder in mistrustful Moscow military circles.

But the call for change -- in any form -- is growing in even the most conservative circles.

One army chief of staff general recently said that only an end to the draft could stem a drugs epidemic in the military.

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