WASHINGTON, Oct 15: US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Friday praised Pakistan for preventing cross-border attacks during the Afghan election and said Islamabad played a useful and important role in ensuring peace at that critical stage.

"Also I have to take advantage of the opportunity to say Pakistan played a useful, important role to cooperate, to prevent as much as possible cross-border operations," he told a briefing at the Pentagon.

This display of goodwill from an envoy who is otherwise known for his blistering attacks on Pakistan was rare and short. He stopped abruptly while searching for more words to praise Pakistan and then moved on to other subjects.

"They deserve a - a," said Mr Khalilzad before moving to say that while catching Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was important, it will not end the war against terror.

"Though symbolically it will be important to catch him or if he gets killed in the process of going after him, the war will go on. In order to succeed in this war, it will take a long time," warned the US ambassador.

Mr Khalilzad described last Saturday's presidential election as "a remarkable event" that allowed millions of Afghans to vote "in an orderly and in a massive fashion".

Reports from Afghanistan suggest that President Hamid Karzai is expected to win the election overwhelmingly when the vote counting completes next week. The Afghan people, said Mr Khalilzad, were aware of the threats from Al Qaeda and the Taliban but had "prepared themselves (even) to die" to exercise their right to vote.

Some of them, he said, "had washed themselves, saying special prayers as if they were going to die." In the central Bamian province, he said, women started queuing up before the polling stations at 3.00 in the morning.

In some places both men and women refused to leave even though there were explosions close to the polling stations, he said. "Afghanistan is clearly today the front line of freedom, and the Afghans took advantage of the opportunity that was provided to them by the coalition to move towards building a democratic society," declared the American ambassador who is a US citizen of Afghan origin.

He said he had come to the Pentagon to thank the US forces who, along with the coalition and Afghan security forces, provided a secure environment for the Afghans to vote.

By effective preventive and pre-emptive action, they precluded what otherwise was going to be potentially a very bloody day, because the Taliban and Al Qaeda declared war on this election," said Mr Khalilzad.

When a reporter suggested that despite the election, the Afghan government was still confined to Kabul and President Karzai was twice attacked when he went out to campaign, Mr Khalilzad said: If the journey of Afghanistan standing on its own feet, being a successful country, is a 10-mile journey, Afghanistan has just, in my view, passed mile three but it's heading in the right direction.

Asked to give a timeframe for returning Afghanistan to normalcy, he said: "It could take as long as 10 years for it to be a truly successful country in terms of security, in terms of economic development, in terms of being a successful democratic state."

The US ambassador said he did not want to predict how long it may take to catch Osama bin Laden, "but I think ultimately one day they will find him - we will find him in a hole somewhere...his days are numbered."