Rabat - Morocco is to scrap compulsory military service in a move analysts said on Thursday was aimed at blocking infiltration of the military by Islamists hatching an anti-monarchist plot.
Morocco has been on alert over radical Islamism since 2003 when suicide bombings killed 45 people in Casablanca, Morocco's commercial capital.
Analysts said the security concerns had deepened since the discovery in August of a group, Ansar el Mehdi (Mehdi Partisans), accused by government officials of planning to launch a holy war to establish a caliphate Islamic state.
The group infiltrated the army and police to recruit at least nine of their members.
The analysts said the group's success to infiltrate the armed forces prompted the authorities to take the decision to scrap conscription
"This text of law came to abolish the obligatory military service with immediate effect, according to the instructions of his Majesty King Mohammed, the commander-in-chief and the chief of staff of the royal armed forces," said junior defence minister, Abderrhmane Sbai.
He said conscription had been breeding a "climate of apathy" and had not been meeting "the requirements of professionalism and scientific and technological training".
Sbai was addressing the defence commission of the Chamber of Counsellors, the parliament upper house, to outline the text of the draft law ending the military service.
The commission endorsed the text, making its approval by the whole parliament a technical procedure since it came in the name of the king, government officials said.
All Moroccan men have had to undertake a year's compulsory military service. Morocco's 300 000 troops will instead become paid professional servicemen.
The government says it had broken about 60 radical Islamist cells plotting attacks over the past three years and arrested more than 3 400 people.
The Interior Ministry said last week in a statement the "terrorism threat had prompted the authorities to adopt a dissuasion and anticipation doctrine" to fight radical Islamism.