MOSCOW. Jan 20 (Interfax-AVN) - Current draft deferments will be revised in 2005, Colonel General Viktor Zavarzin, chairman of the State Duma defense committee, said on Thursday.
"Our committee, jointly with competent directorates of the Defense Ministry and General Staff, is planning to make a thorough revision of all types of current draft deferments. No country in the world has as many draft deferments as Russia - at the moment there are 25 of them," Zavarzin told Interfax-Military News Agency.
Reduction of deferments will be "thorough and gradual," he stressed.
"There can be no hasty, ill-conceived decisions in such a sensitive issue as discharge of constitutional duties by Russian citizens, and our committee will do its best not to make a lot of blunders," Zavarzin said.
Speaking about deferments for students, the lawmaker said that "yesterday's statement of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who assured the public that there are no plans to draft students to the army, corresponds to reality."
"As far as I know, neither lawmakers nor the Defense Ministry have no plans of mass recruitment of academy students to the Armed Forces or other law-enforcement bodies, with which Valentina Melnikova, head of the Soldiers' Mothers Committee, is frightening the public," Zavarzin said.