MOSCOW - Russia said on Tuesday it would step up efforts to modernise its impoverished army and start to modify its mainly conscript military into a more efficient volunteer force as soon as next year.

Military experts, however, were sceptical about the proposed acceleration of reform, saying it was part of a wider political campaign ahead of presidential elections slated for early 2004.

"Units with permanent combat readiness - ground troops, paratroopers and marine infantry...-must be staffed with contract servicemen between 2004 and 2007," Interfax news agency quoted Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov as saying.

Ivanov, seen as a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, previously said the long-awaited shift towards a better trained and high-tech army would not begin before 2007.

Putin, widely expected to win a second and final four-year term next year, wants to transform the demoralised army, once the pride of the Soviet Union and victorious in the Second World War, into a force able to respond to 21st century threats.

Bullying and desertion are commonplace in the underfunded armed forces, with the lowest paid conscripts barely earning enough to buy cigarettes.

Analysts said the government was more focused on parliamentary and presidential elections next winter and spring than on speeding up the possibly unpopular structural reforms.

"No one is going to seriously implement any such military reform in this country," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Moscow-based military analyst.

"This is a pre-election year, and the motives behind (Ivanov's) words are more than clear. His words will be forgotten in a year, and if not, it will be announced that the budget did not allocate enough cash for the reform."

Ivanov, however, said preparations for the shift had almost been completed. The Pskov 76th Paratrooper Division, which expects to be made up of 80 percent professional soldiers by September, has acted as guinea pig for the reforms.

"This experiment has yielded positive and valuable results which helped us make necessary changes to our federal programme," he told a group of heavily pro-Putin centrist factions in the State Duma lower house of parliament.

The 2004 budget is expected to give extra cash to fund more volunteer units, but it is unclear how much money would be eventually allocated. Some analysts estimate the changes would cost an extra $1 billion a year.

This year's budget spending is set at 2.346 trillion roubles, about $70 billion under the budgeted exchange rate.