WASHINGTON, Oct 6, 2008 (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday awarded the State Department's highest honor to US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker and US military general David Petraeus, as she highlighted the 'long road' in Iraq.

'It's been a very, very long road in Iraq. Harder, more difficult, and longer than we would have imagined. Certainly, harder, longer, and more difficult than I personally imagined at its outset,' Rice said.

'But that road has turned in a positive direction and the two people that we honor today ... these two people have been a very big part of that story,' she said as she announced The Distinguished Persons Award for the pair widely credited with engineering the success of the troop 'surge' strategy.

Rice described Petraeus, who has been promoted to head of Central Command in the Middle East and has been replaced in Iraq by his former second in command Raymond Odierno, as 'an intellectual warrior and a warrior intellectual.'

Of Crocker, Rice said he was 'a lion of America's foreign service.'