The proportion of privates and non-commissioned officers recruited under contract rather than by conscription will rise to 49 percent by the end of 2007, up from 22 percent at present, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

But for the forseeable future the army would continue to mix conscripts and volunteers, he said.

The ending of conscription "will take place one day, but not in the immediate future. Attempting to set a date for it would be stupid," the Interfax news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.

The length of military service will be halved from two years to one from 2008, Ivanov told reporters.

Moreover conscripts will no longer be sent to conflict zones, with the provision taking effect "as early as 2005," he said.

Ivanov said that 147,000 servicemen would be recruited under contract between 2004 and end 2007, adding to the present total of 130,000 contracted soldiers.

He added that there would be no division of units into "elite" and "non-elite" categories.

There is "no alternative" to the government plan to set up a contract-based army, he stressed.

Separately, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told government ministers that halving military service from two years to one would be given priority.

"All the details have been finalised and coordinated," he told ministers.

Ministers approved a federal programme on professionalising the armed forces ensuring that only contract servicemen are sent to conflict areas, ITAR-TASS said.

The programme provides for better housing and allowances for professional servicemen along with a variety of incentives.

Ivanov noted that the programme was a public document, with secrecy stipulations applying only to deployment areas and the numbers of units commanded by the defence ministry.

Russia has been trying to reform its chronically underfunded and violence-ridden armed services since the mid-1990s, but reforms aiming to scale back the 1.1 million-strong military have faced a series of setbacks.

Financial shortages have meant that the armed forces have failed to meet initial recruitment targets, and the reform programme has also encountered fierce resistance from conservative Soviet-era generals in the military hierarchy.

The twice-yearly conscription drives suffer from a high rate of avoidance, with the poor service conditions, barbaric initiation rites and possibility of service in wartorn Chechnya acting as a powerful disincentive.

Last week Russia's deputy chief of staff General Yury Baluyevsky said that a 2.8 billion dollar (2.4 billion euro) four-year reform plan paving the way for a move to a fully professional army would be introduced next year.

WAR.WIRE