By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Agreeing cease-fires with Afghan elders in return for pledges to resist the Taliban is a good tactic, even though one such deal collapsed earlier this year, a top British military officer said on Thursday.

"It is the right thing in principle," said General David Richards, a former commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan who will soon take over as the commander-in-chief of Britain's land forces.

Last year Richards backed a cease-fire in the town of Musa Qala in Helmand province whereby British troops agreed to withdraw as long as elders kept the Taliban out.

Months of peace followed before the Taliban captured the town in early February. U.S. Army General Dan McNeill, who succeeded Richards, later dismissed the deal as a mistake.

But Richards said Western forces needed to drive a wedge between what he called a relatively small number of committed Taliban ideologues and the rest of the population.

"(As for) the vast majority -- and I have to say I have taken some sort of slight pleasure in watching people come round to understanding this -- you've got to be selective in how you deal with them," he told Reuters in an interview.

"They're not monolithic and you need to be subtle about dividing and ruling," he said, adding that it made sense to give tribal elders more authority and help.

"So that's what we were trying to do in Musa Qala. And for a while it worked pretty well, actually, then went wrong. But is the principle wrong? No, I'm sure it's not," he said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly offered peace talks with the Taliban, which says it will only talk once the roughly 50,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan depart.

Richards -- who spoke after meeting General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff -- stressed he had the highest regard for McNeill.

The general, saying the Afghan operation was "a good just war if ever there was one and we think we can win it", said he would not be surprised if the British government sent more troops to Afghanistan over the next year.

"I think ... we are there for the long haul but the nature of our engagement should and can change over time, depending on how much reconstruction, development and governance we do over the next year or two," he said.

Critics of the Afghan operation say NATO troops in the more violent southern regions -- where Canadian, British, Dutch and U.S. troops are based -- are spending too much time in combat and not enough on rebuilding the country.

Richards also said he backed the idea of clamping down on the booming narcotics trade in Afghanistan but expressed caution over trying to wipe out opium crops before providing alternative livelihoods for farmers.

"If you just eradicate without addressing that issue then you could turn people who could come our way against you and that's the issue we've got at the moment," he said.

"We need to demonstrate to them that that is not our intent or else we'll have many more people who will say they're Taliban -- but who may not be in the true sense of the word -- who are prepared to fight against us."

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