MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax-AVN) -The defense and security committee of the Federation Council upper house of Russian parliament will hold an extramural session in the 76th airborne division in Pskov, where an experiment on the transition to professional service is underway, committee chairman Viktor Ozerov told Interfax-Military News Agency on Wednesday.
The session that is to be presided over by the committee's deputy chairman Admiral Vyacheslav Popov will take place on April 14-15. Its goal is to study early results of the experiment for the elaboration of a legal mechanism of the transition to professional service in the Armed Forces that is to start in January 2004.
Legislative bodies together with the Defense Ministry and other law-enforcement structures have yet to complete the elaboration of legal acts regulating the transition. "The federal law on the transition to predominantly professional manning in the Armed Forces will be the core of this mechanism. The law will have direct action," Ozerov said.
He noted that the session will involve officials of the Defense Ministry, General Staff, airborne command and related committees of the Federation Council.