NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) will stop any outbreak of violence in Kosovo amid heightened tensions as a resolution on the restive Serbian province's future approaches, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the alliance's secretary general, said in Kosovo on Friday.

"KFOR is here and will stay here to protect every Kosovo citizen, majority and minority alike," De Hoop Scheffer told reporters in the Kosovo's capital Pristina after separate meetings with ethnic Albanian majority leaders and Kosovo Serb leaders.

Although formally still part of Serbia, Kosovo has been run by the U.N. mission since mid-1999, while KFOR troops are responsible to provide security guarantee. KFOR troops were cut from 50,000 to the current 16,000.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders say they will declare unilateral independence early in 2008, counting on protection from NATO and prompt recognition by the United States and most EU countries.

Serbia, which insists on sovereignty over the province with a minority Serb population, has promised to refrain from military action, but tensions are expected to escalate over Kosovo's predominantly Serb northern municipalities and scattered Serb enclaves around the province.

Of concern are not only military issues but a possible repeat of ethnic violence.

Ethnic Albanian rioting in March 2004 prompted thousands of Serbs to flee, as most KFOR contingents failed to protect Serb monasteries and property.

NATO says it now has better contingency plans to contain such outbreaks. Germany recently sent an additional 500 troops to patrol the province's Serb-dominated north, and some 90 U.S. service members were also deployed along Kosovo's boundary with the rest of Serbia.

"Violence is not an option, violence won't be tolerated and can 't be tolerated," de Hoop Scheffer said.

There are sufficient international peacekeepers in Kosovo for the time being, but that additional forces will be deployed in Kosovo if necessary, he said, adding that KFOR will cooperate with the U.N. police and the local Kosovo Police Service.

Two years of negotiations between Serbian and separatist ethnic Albanian leaders ended earlier this week without any agreement on Kosovo's future status. The mediating troika of EU, U.S. and Russian envoys is to visit Belgrade and Pristina on Monday and then submit a report with recommendations to Ban Ki-moon, U.N. secretary-general, by Dec. 10.

Talks led by the troika were a last-ditch effort to avoid unilateral solutions, after Russia, Serbia's ally, prevented the adoption at the U.N. Security Council of a new resolution for Kosovo's supervised independence.