DAR ES SALAAM -- US President George W. Bush said Sunday that he supports a UN envoy's plan for the independence of Kosovo, poised to become the world's newest state.

"On Kosovo, our position is that its status must be resolved in order for the Balkans to be stable. Secondly, we have strongly supported the Ahtisaari plan," Bush said, referring to a so-called "supervised independence" plan put forward by the former Finnish president and UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

"Thirdly, we are heartened by the fact that the Kosovo government has clearly proclaimed its willingness and its desire to support Serbian rights in Kosovo," Bush said during a visit to Africa.

"We also believe it's in Serbia's interests to be aligned with Europe. And the Serbian people can know that they have a friend in America," said the US leader.

"Finally, the United States will continue to work with our allies to do the very best we can to make sure there's no violence," Bush told reporters. "Those are the principles going into the Kosovo issue."

Prodded on whether the United States would recognize Kosovo, Bush retorted: "I suggest you study the Ahtisaari plan."

Ahtisaari presented a plan in early 2007 calling for independence under international supervision for Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia which has a 90-percent ethnic Albanian population.

Kosovo has been under United Nations administration since 1999 when a US-led NATO air war against Milosevic's regime wrested the landlocked province of two million people from Belgrade's grip.

Kosovo's Albanian-dominated parliament is expected to declare independence later Sunday. It will be followed by a 120-day transition period, marked by the deployment of a 2,000-strong European Union police and judicial team intended to smoothen the transition and ensure democracy.

Serbia and its ally Russia have said Kosovo's planned unilateral declaration of independence is illegal.