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Britain's top commander in Afghanistan says the war will not end in victory, the latest indication of soul-searching as Canada's allies grapple with how to handle the rising power of the Taliban insurgency.

The blunt statement from Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith - "We're not going to win this war" - came just days after a leaked diplomatic cable hinted that the British ambassador in Kabul has a similarly dark forecast. The brigadier suggested that a negotiated settlement will be necessary.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Brig. Carleton-Smith

said a "decisive military victory" is not feasible and that NATO should lower its expectations about the outcome of the war. "If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this."

"That shouldn't make people uncomfortable," he said.

That places Britain, with at least 3,500 troops standing alongside Canada's forces in southern Afghanistan, in direct conflict with U.S. leaders, who continue to argue strenuously that the war can only be won by substantially defeating the Taliban. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers have endorsed that view, although most other NATO nations have favoured negotiations.

Brig. Carleton-Smith's words are the most explicit expression yet of a view that has become dominant in many member nations of NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

That view effectively isolates the United States, the biggest donor of money and troops to the war. Starting later this month, the U.S. Afghanistan strategy will be designed by General David Petreus, who devised the "surge" of extra troops in Iraq last year and who has become the head of U.S. Central Command in order to shift the country's priorities toward the Afghan war.

Prime Minister Harper has previously sided with the Americans on such questions, refusing any suggestion of direct negotiations with the Taliban and ridiculing politicians who have suggested a political solution. Conservatives gave NDP Leader Jack Layton the nickname "Taliban Jack" for lobbying in favour of negotiations in recent years, and the moniker became popular among Canadian troops as a derisive shorthand for politicians who don't support the war.

During last week's election debate, however, Mr. Harper avoided discussing the possibility of a victory and suggested that Canada's goals now involve empowering Afghan forces rather than totally defeating the Taliban: "If we are to truly pacify that country and see its evolution, we have to train the Afghan army and police so that they are credibly able to take greater responsibility for their own security."

Brig. Carleton-Smith's pessimism "isn't different from the evaluation made by almost everyone in the U.S. government in private ... about the way things are going now," said Barnett Rubin, a leading academic on Afghanistan, in a telephone interview from his home in New York.

But the opinions contrast starkly with U.S. statements to the media: "We plan on winning in Afghanistan," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said yesterday. "It's going to be tough and going to take some time, but we will eventually succeed."

The disagreement has emerged as the U.S. government conducts a major review of its Afghanistan strategy and the war becomes a hotly debated issue in the U.S presidential election. Both candidates have promised several thousand more troops, but neither John McCain nor Barack Obama have described a significant change in direction.

"McCain wants to keep on doing what we're doing, and Obama wants to double down on what we're doing," Mr. Rubin said, suggesting that the British may be trying to push more creative ideas. "They're trying to communicate that we need to do something different."

A British government official said last night that the brigadier's views "do not contradict" the position of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government: "This government has repeatedly said that the goal in Afghanistan is not to have a total military victory, but to improve the country's capacity to govern itself and to ensure its own security. ... A political settlement rather than a military settlement has always been the goal."

But the Afghan government has usually set tough conditions on any political deals with the Taliban. That uncompromising view has so far been supported by the United States, which fears allowing safe havens for extremism inside the country's borders.

"It is disappointing, for sure," said Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan's Defence Minister, when asked by reporters in Kabul about the British comments. "The main objective of the Afghan government and the whole international community is that we have to defeat this war of terror," he said.

In the diplomatic cable leaked to the media last week, the British ambassador to Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, was described as saying that the foreign troops aren't helping to stabilize the forces within Afghanistan.

"The presence - especially the military presence - of the coalition is part of the problem, not the solution," the message was quoted as saying. "The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them. ... The reinforcement of the military presence would have a perverse effect: It would identify us even more clearly as an occupying force and it would multiply the number of targets [for the insurgents]."

Perhaps foreshadowing the public disagreement between the U.S. and Britain, the cable continued: "We have no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan ... but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one."