Rice: Obama election a key moment in history

US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice hailed the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president as a key moment in history.

Republican Ms Rice, the first African-American female to be secretary of state, said the US was not “race-blind”, but “I think all Americans were quite taken with the fact that we were able, after the long history we’ve been through, that initial birth defect of slavery, that we’ve elected an African-American”.