UNITED NATIONS, JAN 18: The United Nations Security Council prepared to hold an urgent meeting today to discuss the situation in Kosovo after the massacre of ethnic Albanians last week triggered parleys for a NATO intervention in the vitiating ceasefire condition.The Albanian government asked for the meeting in a letter to the Council's president, calling the killings in the Kosovo village of Racak, a ``barbaric act''. The 15 members of the Security Council are scheduled to meet at 6.30 GMT, a UN spokesman said.At least 45 Albanians were killed at Racak. The massacre is blamed on Serbian security forces. The killings have prompted renewed calls for NATO intervention in the Kosovo conflict where Serbia is accused of targetting civilians in its drive to crush armed Kosovo separatists.On Sunday, the 16 members of NATO stopped short of a military intervention but decided that US General Wesley Clark, NATO's Supreme commander for Europe, and German General Klaus Naumann, head of the alliance's militarycommittee, would go to Belgrade to meet the Yugoslav President.The two NATO military chiefs will remind the Serb forces of its promises made last October to ease the tension in Kosovo, a diplomat said after the three-and-a-half hour meeting here.An idea mooted to send NATO Secretary General Javier Solana to Belgrade was not decided upon.All 16 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ``very strongly'' condemned the massacre in Racak, the diplomatic sources said.NATO also called on the Yugoslav authorities to cooperate fully with the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to bring to justice those responsible for the massacre.An ICTY mission including prosecutor Louise Arbour was due to set out Monday for Yugoslavia and has called on Yugoslav authorities to "facilitate" their access to the massacre site.In Racak on Sunday, Serbian forces once again clashed with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighters as sobbing residents attempted to identifythe victims of the massacre and others fled their homes.The OSCE ceasefire verification mission in Kosovo said Belgrade was responsible for this `breach of the ceasefire,' describing the deployment of Serbian forces around Racak as a `provocation.'The mission - which oversees a US-brokered October ceasefire - added that its officials were ready to assist a Serbian judge tasked with investigating Friday's massacre.But the judge refused on Sunday to move into the village, which is controlled by the KLA, although KVM monitors were also present without the backing of the armed police units. In a statement late on Sunday, the KLA said the international community had to share some of the blame.``The massacre at Racak is perhaps the last wake-up call for the Albanians to understand that the KLA is the sole ideology, institution, parliament, presidency and government,'' it said in the statement carried by its Kosovo news agency.
