KABUL (Reuters) – The new U.S. envoy to Afghanistan on Wednesday described Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a brave man who holds one of the world’s most difficult jobs, strong praise that could signal a U.S. bid to reset an often tense and acrimonious relationship.

U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, speaking a few days after arriving in Kabul, said he had already been given a warm welcome by many senior Afghan officials.

“I have had no one question the value of the relationship, or even hint at it,” Crocker told journalists at his first news conference in the post. “What they have said virtually without exception is … they consider the relationship with the United States extremely important.”

His predecessor was Karl Eikenberry, a former general widely known to have a difficult relationship with Karzai. Some diplomats and military officers complained of a U.S. political “vacuum” in Kabul while he was at the helm.

Weeks before he left, Eikenberry issued a thinly veiled warning to Karzai that his strong criticisms of the West were “hurtful and inappropriate” and could jeopardise troops and funding critical to the Afghan government’s survival.

Relations have been strained by a string of problems, from Karzai’s repeated criticism of Western military tactics to his fraught relationship with parliament and his handling of the collapse of Kabulbank, the country’s largest private lender, with hundreds of millions of dollars of bad loans.

But Crocker, asked how he would characterise ties with Karzai, had only praise for the president, who he has known since he served a brief period in Kabul in 2002.