U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. will no longer give explicit support to governments that are not elected, suggesting that spreading democracy now takes priority over maintaining political stability.

``The past 60 years of trying to buy stability at the expense of democracy is now gone,'' Rice said at a press conference in Blackburn, England, that was televised by the British Broadcasting Corp. The policy was one of ``Middle East exceptionalism,'' she said.

But I would say that probably the most important thing that we've done is to declare for the past 60 years of American policy that in the Middle East, the heart of the problem that we currently face, that the 60 years of trying to buy stability at the expense of democracy is now gone. There was a kind of Middle East exceptionalism in American policy and that policy was both because we were so concerned about stability ... And that premise has been proved wrong time and time again throughout the world ... And so that is the policy change that I would hope would be somehow acknowledged by Muslims, even if they don't agree.