Condoleezza Rice Played Key Role In Bringing India And The U.S. Together: John Kerry

WASHINGTON: Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice played a key role in bringing India and the US "together" and reached a civilian nuclear agreement, according to America's top diplomat.

At a portrait unveiling ceremony of Rice at the State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry praised his predecessor for her key diplomatic initiatives from January 2005 to January 2009.

"For four years, for more than a million miles of travel, every single day she was here and anywhere in the world, she put those words into action to make sure that diplomacy was always America's first resort, and to make the State Department the center of America's foreign policy," he said.

"That's how she brought together the world's oldest democracy, the United States, with the world's largest democracy, India, and ended years of acrimony and reached a civilian nuclear agreement," Kerry said yesterday.

"That's how she brought the United States together with the five permanent members of the Security Council in Germany to say for the first time with a united voice that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. That's how she helped contain a toxic mix of force that could've fueled a much bigger conflict, but to end the war in Lebanon," he said.

After serving as the 66th Secretary of State, Rice was succeeded by Hillary Clinton, Kerry's immediate predecessor.

In her remarks, Rice said America is, after all, an idea. "It is a universal idea that we the people ought to be an inclusive concept, not one that is bound by religion or nationality or ethnicity, but by a belief that one can come from humble circumstances and do great things; that aspiration is the mother's milk of success," she said.

And the United States of America has been that guiding light," she said.

Acknowledging that these are very difficult times, she said they are times when, as people of particularly the Middle East test the proposition that no one should live in tyranny, they're times that seem chaotic and they seem dangerous, and sometimes there are those who say that maybe there are just those who don't have the DNA for democracy, maybe they're just not ready for democracy.

READ MORE: Not U.S., India Spearheaded in Combating Climate Change: Survey and Modi Wave Reaches Brazil: Invited For FIFA World Cup 2014