Serbia will use all its economic, political and diplomatic means to stop Kosovo seceding but will not resort to violence, Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.

Jeremic warned an extraordinary closed-door council session that letting the province become independent would be "a disaster of unfathomable proportions" and dozens of other disgruntled territories around the world would follow suit.

"We shall undertake all diplomatic, political, and economic measures designed to impede and reverse this direct and unprovoked attack on our sovereignty," Jeremic said in a text of his speech made available to media. He gave no details.

But he repeated past pledges that Belgrade would not use force to keep Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians from seceding. They are expected to declare independence on Sunday.

Earlier on Thursday Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told Serbs for the first time that the imminent loss of their historic province of Kosovo would soon be a reality.

Jeremic said Serbia, like its ally Russia, saw Kosovo's planned secession as a violation of international law and would never accept it. He urged the council to take last-minute action to prevent the province from splitting off.

"The unilateral and illegal declaration of independence of Kosovo from Serbia ... would constitute nothing less than the forcible partition of a sovereign member state of the United Nations," he said.

Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since 1999, when NATO troops were deployed there after the Western alliance bombed Serbia to compel it to stop killing and driving out Albanians in a counter-insurgency war.

FEARS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING

Jeremic warned the 15 council members and dozens of other countries permitted to attend the session that Kosovo's actions would spark a chain reaction around the world.

"We all know that there are dozens of Kosovos throughout the world, just waiting for secession to be legitimized."

Western diplomats said ahead of the meeting that the council would listen closely to Jeremic but take no action. Once Kosovo declares independence the United States and most European Union and other Western countries are expected to recognize it immediately.

Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanians, but around 120,000 Serbs remain. Jeremic made clear that Belgrade feared for the lives of the Serbs and called for NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers to protect them from "a repeat of the ethnic cleansing against the Serb population."

An EU mission of some 2,000 police and judges will aim to ensure that Kosovo's leaders keep their promises to build an equitable, multi-ethnic state under the rule of law.

The United States and EU declared in December the council was hopelessly deadlocked on Kosovo after months of supervised negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina yielded no results.

They accused Russia of preventing the council from adopting a resolution that would have resolved opened the door to Kosovo's independence. Moscow has said it would prevent Kosovo from joining the United Nations and other international political organizations.