Ivanov, speaking to Russian journalists on a visit to Washington, also said that a regiment from the 76th parachute division based in Pskov would be dispatched to the breakaway republic within a few months, Interfax reported.

The Russian military last year launched the first pilot scheme for a professional army with this parachute division in western Russia. The 1.1 million currently enlisted in the armed forces are mainly poorly-trained conscripts.

"The paratroopers will be sent to Chechnya as part of a rotation," the defence minister said, denying that Russia was reinforcing its troop levels in the southern territory, which has been hit by a renewed wave of guerrilla attacks.

"The burden on our armed forces in Chechnya is continuing to decrease," he said.

However, Ivanov conceded that Russia, which has 80,000 troops stationed in Chechnya where fighting has been raging since October 1999, was far from pacifying the rebel resistance.

"The last terrorist acts in Chechnya are not a dying agony of the rebels. Let's not delude ourselves, there is a lot to be done yet to achieve stability and calm in the republic," he said.

On Monday last week, suicide bombers drove a truck packed with a tonne of explosives into a government building in the northern village of Znamenskoye, killing 60 people.

Then on Wednesday, 18 people were killed when a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded Muslim religious event organized by the pro-Kremlin Unity Russia party in Iliskhan-Yurt, east of the capital Grozny.

WAR.WIRE