For converting kvm-xml to qemu-native, qemu needs to be installed/updated in entirety. Doing a complete "sudo make install" for qemu, will take care of the conversion (without touching virt-manager / kvm /libvirt). "sudo make install" (for qemu) safely updates the older qemu-files (if any), provided the (qeemu) build has been configured via "./configure --prefix=/usr". Marking this thread as closed-solved.
