Rome ? Top U.S. and European officials agreed Wednesday on the need for urgent action to halt the fighting in Lebanon and on the creation of a multinational force to keep the peace.

But the two sides had starkly divergent views of what that means.

Most Europeans want Israel to stop its offensive against Hezbollah now – which would leave Hezbollah battered but defiant. The United States wants to give Israel more time to pound the militia into submission as part of the wider war on terror.

The foreign ministers and other senior officials from 15 nations, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and representatives from the European Union and the World Bank, agreed in Rome on a declaration that expressed “deep concern” for the high number of civilian casualties in Lebanon, where government officials say hundreds of people have been killed. Israel, Iran and Syria did not attend the meeting.

Deep differences in an approach to the crisis were abundantly clear.

In the presence of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema alluded to the discord in post-conference comments. He said many participants appealed for an immediate and unconditional truce “to reach, with utmost urgency, a cease-fire that puts an end to the current violence and hostilities.”

Rice, for her part, deflected pressure to lean on Israel to end its two-week-old offensive, insisting that any cease-fire must be “sustainable” and there could be “no return to the status quo ante.”

Later, Rice briefed reporters, saying she told the conference: “The fields of the Middle East are littered with broken cease-fires. … And every time there is a broken cease-fire, people die, there is destruction and there is misery.”

At the conference, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora had difficulty containing his disappointment, saying the conference made “some progress” but pleading with world leaders to keep working toward a cease-fire.

Saniora said the violence has brought his country, still rebuilding from its 1975-90 civil war, “to its knees.”

The Lebanese leader recognized that Israel’s offensive had been sparked by Hezbollah’s incursion across the “blue line” – the border recognized by the United Nations – when it killed eight soldiers and kidnapped two, but added that the military campaign was “disproportionate.”

The Western-leaning moderate also appealed to Israel to enter a peace process with all its Arab neighbors – striking a markedly different tone from many previous Lebanese leaders.

The Rome conference did clinch a consensus on establishing a new multinational force for southern Lebanon – one far tougher than the existing, three-decade-old UNIFIL operation which has lacked a mandate to prevent hostilities.

“What we agreed upon is that there should be an international force under a U.N. mandate that will have a strong and robust capability to help bring about peace, to help provide the ability for humanitarian efforts to go forward and to bring an end to the violence,” Rice told reporters.

“We all committed to dedicated and urgent action to try to bring about an end to violence that would be sustainable” and leave the Lebanese government in full control of its territory, she said.

She also pointed a finger at Iran and Syria, which she accused of stoking the violence. Rice said she expected both countries not to undermine any agreement reached between Israel and Lebanon and welcomed Annan’s offer to use his office “to try to make sure that Syria and Iran behave responsibly.”