Geoff Hoon believes the military must re-cast its role

"We certainly haven't tried to come down to the planned figure particularly quickly... in a sense I'm pleased that we haven't," he said.

There has been a 20% drop in TA numbers since 1996.

Six years ago there were 51,579 TA volunteer reserves. This dropped to a low of 38,738 in 2000 but by 2001, numbers had risen to 40,308.

The total army reserve is around 215,000, but this figure includes 136,000 people who have left the army but are subject to recall in emergency, and other groups like the regular army reserve and cadet forces.

Mr Hoon told the newspaper that in the event of a major crisis, the TA might well be used to supplement police capabilities in a kind of 'homeland' defence force.

Continuity warning

However, he cautioned against "lurching from one policy solution to another, simply as a result of 11 September".

"We have just conducted a huge exercise in Oman... precisely to test our ability to move very heavy equipment to a desert scenario similar to the one we faced in the Gulf War.

"We can't abandon everything we've done before, simply because certain events occur.

"I think the answer that we will eventually reach is that we need a range of forces capable of doing a number of tasks, not necessarily those for which they were designed."

He added that intelligence capabilities would definitely not be cut.

And he said that the European Union should do more together, to bring European levels of defence capability closer to those of the US.

Military 'rebalancing'

Proposals for an expanded role for the TA, especially in defending key installations from terrorist attack, were unveiled on 14 February.

The plans, contained in a Ministry of Defence discussion paper, formed part of the government's "rebalancing" of Britain's armed forces following the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US.

Late last year, up to 140 part-time soldiers from 3 (Volunteer) Military Intelligence Battalion were called up to help sift through evidence about the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

It was the first time TA reservists had been compulsorily mobilised since the Suez crisis 41 years ago.

Officials hope the latest review will be completed by April.