NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Tuesday he expected no changes in US commitment to the alliance and its missions after the election of the new president of the United States.

`From what I have heard and seen from both candidates... they both are fully committed to NATO and NATO operations,` Scheffer told reporters during a visit to Kosovo.

Scheffer said both candidates -- Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain -- have mentioned NATO missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo during the campaign.

`I am quite certain and quite sure that any president chosen today will pay a lot of attention to Afghanistan and I also know ... about the US commitment to (NATO-led peacekeeping force) KFOR operations in Kosovo,` he said.

`So I do not expect any change in that regard,` the NATO chief said.

KFOR troops, some 16,000 soldiers, have been charged with securing peace in Kosovo since the end of a NATO-led bombing campaign in 1999, which put an end to late strongman Slobodan Milosevic`s crackdown on the independence-seeking ethnic Albanian majority there.

In Afghanistan, some 53,000 NATO peacekeepers have been deployed in a fight against a growing Taliban-led insurgency.