U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ruled out an American recognition of the Georgian secessionist region of South Ossetia.

Speaking to journalist en route to Brussels for a NATO foreign ministerial council, she said: “It is not going to happen.”

South Ossetian secessionist authorities had called on the international community to recognize its independence. A journalist asked the U.S. secretary of state whether she thought the appeal was "a provocation" from Moscow, “or do you think it’s something inevitable?”

Rice responded: “I don’t want to try to judge the motives, but we’ve been very clear that Kosovo is sui generis and that that is because of the special circumstances out of which the breakup of Yugoslavia came.  The special circumstances of the aggression of the Milosevic forces against Kosovars, particularly Albanian Kosovars, and it’s a special circumstance.”