Belgrade is "ready to send troops to the international forces to stabilize the situation in Kosovo within the framework of (UN Security Council) resolution 1244 and the (NATO) mission and the UN mission in Kosovo," said the communique issued by the Supreme Defense Council (VSO) and published by Tanjug news agency.

Defense Minister Boris Tadic told BK television after a council meeting that Belgrade meant to "assist NATO troops with its professional troops to protect non-Albanian citizens in Kosovo".

Such assistance would have to be authorized by the United Nations Security Council, he added.

The defense council expressed concern at "the escalating organized violence in Kosovo" and called on the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to "guarantee the security of Serbs, Montenegrins and their property in Kosovo."

According to news agency reports, eight Serbs have been killed in the unrest in various parts of the province.

In the Kosovo capital Pristina, a hospital official told AFP Wednesday that at least 14 people had died in the ethnic violence in major cities in Kosovo.

Another 250 people were injured Wednesday as the UN-administered Serbian province was swept by its worst violence between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in three years that also left UN vehicles in the capital Pristina charred.

Eleven French soldiers from NATO's KFOR peacekeeping force -- deployed in Kosovo after the 1999 war which forced out the Serb army -- were also injured, three of them seriously, as they attempted to reestablish order in the divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica.

The province came under UN administration in 1999, following NATO's 78-day air war against then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's forces, accused of repressing ethnic Albanians.

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