News agencies quoted Kasyanov as telling a government meeting on military staffing that he thought one year of service for call-ups to the army would be "the optimal option."

Russian teens conscripted into the army currently serve two years while those who join the navy serve three. Kasyanov made no mention of navy reforms on Thursday.

"We have to agree that that conscription has to be reduced," RIA Novosti quoted Kasyanov as telling his government.

The government later Thursday was expected to hear army reforms proposals from Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and plans backed by liberal forces in the lower house of parliament that want to see conscription cut back to six months.

The government is expected to decide which reform plan to formally support by June 1.

Cash-strapped Russia has struggled for over a decade over how to reform its bloated Soviet-era military which has twice been dealt a bloody nose by a small force of lightly armed guerrillas in separatist Chechnya.

Ivanov has gone back on plans to eliminate the unpopular army conscription before the end of the decade, instead proposing to set up a small fully professional force as the backbone of the country's defenses by 2007.

Ivanov has said a new professional force of some 166,000 servicemen -- just a fraction of the estimated 1.1 million currently enlisted in the armed forces -- "will become the main force of the army."

These troops will include 126,000 soldiers and sergeants in addition to 40,000 officers.

Ivanov said Russia can afford a smaller force that takes part in conflicts like the current three-and-a-half year war in Chechnya "because we are not currently facing a large-scale military threat."

SPACE.WIRE