WASHINGTON

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday praised the sacrifice of the U.S. in helping to build his country, as he spoke before a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

“We owe a profound debt to the soldiers who have lost limbs to buried bombs, to the brave veterans, and to the families who tragically lost their loved ones to the enemy's cowardly acts of terror,” Ghani said in a nearly hour-long speech.

The Afghan leader promised U.S. lawmakers he would be a trustworthy partner while his war-torn country tries a fresh start.

"Never again will our country be host to terrorists," he said. "Never again will we give extremists the sanctuary to plan their destructive plots.”

Afghanistan women now have more rights than compared to 2001.

"On September 10, 2001, there are no girls enrolled in school in Afghanistan. It was illegal to educate girls,” he said, but today in Afghanistan, "more than 3 million girls in primary schools across the country are learning to openly and actively participate in the future of a democratic Afghanistan." 

The Columbia University graduate Ghani also reminisced about his time in the U.S. "I ate corned beef at Katz's, New York's greatest, meatiest, pickle-lined melting pot." 

Ghani's address came one day after he met with President Barack Obama, who agreed to keep 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan through 2015, at the request of the Afghanistan government.

Obama had originally planned to reduce U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan to 5,000 by the end of 2015.