KABUL, May 2: President Barack Obama said on Wednesday the war in Afghanistan was winding down and now was the time to “renew America”.

“As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it’s time to renew America,” the US president said in a televised address to the nation from the Bagram base, north of Kabul, which he visited late on Tuesday night on the eve of the first anniversary ofOsama bin Laden’s eleimination.

“This time of war began in Afghanistan, and this is where it will end,” speaking against a backdrop of armoured vehicles and a US flag.

Nearly 3,000 US and Nato soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Kabul, said he did not believe there would be a sole turning point in the war.

“Al Qaeda is still there. We do feel we are prevailing in this with our Afghan partners,” he said. “We cannot be in a position of taking on ourselves bringing perfection to Afghanistan. That has to be left to Afghans.”

But Crocker said there would be no repeat of the 1990s when a withdrawal of Western backers in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal unleashed a vicious civil war, out of which the Taliban and Al Qaeda support bases arose.

A worker at the compound, Jamrod, said at a hospital where the wounded President Obama’s visit was clearly an election-year event.

He spoke to US troops during a stay in Afghanistan of roughly six hours and emphasised Osama bin Laden’s demise, an event his re-election campaign has touted as one of his most important achievements in office.

“Not only were we able to drive Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, but slowly and systematically we have been able to decimate the ranks of Al Qaeda, and a year ago we were able to finally bring Osama bin Laden to justice,” Obama said to cheers.

But even as he asserted in his speech that there was a “clear path” to fulfilling the US mission in Afghanistan and made his strongest claim yet that the defeat of Al Qaeda was “within reach”, he warned of further hardship ahead.

“I recognise that many Americans are tired of war ... But we must finish the job we started in Afghanistan and end this war responsibly,” he said at Bagram airbase, where only months ago thousands of Afghans rioted after US troops accidentally burned copies of the holy Quran.

That incident, and the killing of 17 Afghan civilians by a rogue US soldier weeks later, plunged already tense relations to their lowest point in years.—Reuters