MOSCOW. Dec 7 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's liberal Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS) party said on Friday that it held largely the same views on a planned military reform as the General Staff of the Armed Forces does, but that there was a "large-scale disagreement" on when contractual service should replace conscription.
"Problems of the transition to a professional armed force were discussed on Friday at a conference in the government of the Russian Federation with the participation of Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. Our positions largely coincides with the position of the General Staff," SPS leader Boris Nemtsov told a news conference.
He said Chief-of-Staff Anatoly Kvashnin had backed a SPS proposal to abolish conscription and was not against a proposal to cut the service period to one year or six months.
At the same time, there was "one large-scale disagreement" - the SPS and General Staff were divided on when conscription should be scrapped, Nemtsov said. The General Staff is proposing a transition period of 10 years, while "we propose that
Nemtsov expressed the conviction that Russia had enough money for a shorter transition period than that proposed by the General Staff.
He said that, according to a reform program drawn up by the SPS, the country "can have a battle-ready professional army of 850,000 people" by 2005 and a reserve of 5 million to 6 million.
"If we make this transition too long, Russia may share the fate of the Roman empire, whose decay began with the decay of the army," he said at the news conference held at the Interfax central office in Moscow.