He couldn't tell us yes without a declaration of independence” Rubin shows negotiations with Thaci

He said they wanted the world on their side to convince Serbia to achieve peace.

And it was the essence of diplomacy that was being discussed in Rambouillet. We wanted you to gather the whole world together, not alone. The U.S., but the European state, even Russia that was part of these negotiations, has been a unique moment in history when major states were then trying to prevent a massacre. To do this, we wanted great powers to work together. Albright wanted the most unanimity between the great powers and the help of Russia. Russia was in favour of the Serbian desire not to have an independence declaration translated into a document. We didn't have any clear position as far as independence was concerned we needed a compromise of diplomatic action, an effort to move into the next phase where we had the whole world on our side to convince Serbs to agree with the peace agreement. He couldn't tell us “but” without a specific independence statement, because he had to discuss with the UCK commanders. The people who wanted independence for Kosovo were maximum, wanted everything, trying to find a golden one so we wouldn't say yes to independence on that document. So we said you can express the will of the people without specifically saying the word independence he told us unless I use the word independence they would consider me a person who gave up on the independence of the country, so it was very difficult moment”, Ruby said.