Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Wednesday hailed Barack Obama becoming the first black presidential nominee of a major US party, saying it showed America was an "extraordinary country."
"The United States of America is an extraordinary country," Rice, the first black woman to be the nation's top diplomat, told reporters when asked to comment on Obama's historic victory late Tuesday in the grueling 2008 Democratic primaries.
"It's a country that has overcome many, many years, decades -- actually a couple of centuries -- of trying to make good on its principles," Rice said.
"I think that what we're seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that we the people is beginning to mean all of us."
But Rice, who is the highest ranking African-American in the current White House administration, added she wanted to stay out of the presidential campaign itself.
Her predecessor Colin Powell was the first African-American to hold the post as secretary of state.
In March, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Rice said the United States was a remarkable country where someone like her could rise to a position first held by a slave owner.
She was referring to Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner who served as the nation's first secretary of state from 1790-1793, AFP reported.