WASHINGTON, April 12: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday that promoting democracy was always preferable to working with tyrannical rulers in the name of stability.

Ms Rice, who was addressing a gathering of about 100 journalists from across the world, conceded that US policies were not always “very popular.” But she said it was so because sometimes her country has to stand for “very difficult” causes. “Somebody had to stand up and say that terrorists cannot be negotiated with.

They have to be defeated. And that has meant that we've had to sometimes engage in policies that are not always very popular,” she explained.

Addressing the issue of democracy and the perception that America often supports tyrannical rulers to promote its interests, Ms Rice said: “The dedication of the United States to democracy, to the building of democracy, as hard as that is, even in a place like Iraq where it is very, very hard, is preferable to assuming that there was stability when people were simply kept oppressed by tyrannical rulers.”