"From 3,000 to 5,000 people may be sent to alternative civil service in autumn next year," General Viktor Kozhushko, a senior official from the general staff's mobilisation department, told the Interfax news agency.

He said the new law on civil service will come into force on January 1, 2004, after which conscripts will be able to apply for it.

"The application must be filed at least half a year before the draft-up. So the first men in civil service will take up their duties in autumn next year," the general added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in July last year signed into law a bill that establishes the right for civil service after the measure passed both houses of parliament.

Alternative service has been hailed as a symbolic step in reforming Russia's unpopular and often brutal conscription system, although liberals say that the form of service set out in the bill is little better than serving in the ranks.

Under the legislation, young men who qualify as conscientious objectors must do up to three and a half years of alternative service, compared to two years for regular conscripts. They are also required to serve outside their home region.

The length of service is cut to three years for anyone carrying out alternative service on a military base.

The service is likely to involve doing menial jobs for the military or working as hospital orderlies or carers in orphanages, though this has not been made explicit by the law.

Some 400,000 youngsters are drafted each year, but according to an analysis by the Carnegie Moscow Center, as many as 100,000 dodge the draft, most of them scared off by the military's reputation for poor living conditions and "dedovshchina," or hazing -- a brutal form of initiation.

A 2.8 billion dollar (2.4 billion euro) four-year reform plan that aims to have half the armed forces made up of volunteers by 2008 is be introduced next year.

The length of military service is also to be halved from two years to one from 2008.

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.

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