Rice find no quick fixes in Mideast

~ She explored options for enforcing peace after the fighting stops between Israel and Hezbollah.

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice won praise from Israel but little enthusiasm from its Arab neighbors as she shuttled between Middle East cities Tuesday, still lacking a formula for ending Israeli-Hezbollah fighting or for long-term peace.

Two days into her high-stakes diplomatic mission, Rice explored options for enforcing peace after the fighting does stop between Israel and the Hezbollah militia.

Assistant secretary of state David Welch, traveling with Rice, said a cease-fire cannot be reached overnight. Another senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about international forces that might be sent to southern Lebanon, said such troops would not "shoot their way in," indicating fighting would have to be quelled first.

Rice arrived in Rome late Tuesday for meetings with European and moderate Arab officials about the fighting along the border between Lebanon and Israel. Many of those diplomats were expected to push the United States to urge Hezbollah and Israel to end their clash soon.

Rice left the Middle East after meetings Tuesday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. U.S. officials touted one public victory that they considered key: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said after meeting Rice that Israel would allow humanitarian assistance to move into Lebanon by land, air and sea.

"I wouldn't trivialize this provision of humanitarian assistance," Welch said. "If we're arguing that it's hard to get a cease-fire, then in the interim we've got to be doing some things to address the consequences of conflict."

Palestinian officials said after their private meeting with Rice that she presented nothing new on their dispute with Israel. Separately, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, whose Hamas party was not present at the session, said from what he heard about Rice's conversation with President Mahmoud Abbas, it "doesn't augur well" for a solution to the Middle East crisis.

But standing beside Olmert in Israel, Rice said the time had come for a new Middle East.

"It is time to say to those that don't want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail. They will not," she said.

"I have no doubt there are those who wish to strangle a democratic and sovereign Lebanon in its crib," Rice said. "We, of course, also urgently want to end the violence."

As conditions for a cease-fire, Israel is seeking the immediate release of the two Israeli soldiers that Hezbollah militants kidnapped July 12, the militia's withdrawal from southern Lebanon and deployment of an international force that would disarm the remaining Hezbollah fighters in the south and create a buffer zone there.

Hezbollah also would have to give up its longer-range missiles, a goal supported by the United States, and must be prevented from rearming. Israel says that would require international monitoring of cargo arriving from Syria.

"Before the 'new Middle East,' let's get some obtainable objectives," said Ephraim Sneh, chief of Israeli forces in South Lebanon in the early 1980s, and now a Labor member of parliament. "To push away Hezbollah from our border, and not to allow them to come back. To destroy their infrastructure in the south that allows them to launch rockets. And to get our POWs back.

"It will take time -- two, three weeks -- but we can do it," Sneh said. "To maintain it, it will require international activity or an agreement. We have to seal this area, but we need someone to take our place," when Israeli troops are pulled back.

Many questions remain about what any international force would look like, including whether the troops would be stationed around the country or just in Lebanon's tense south. Also to be negotiated is the role of Lebanese forces and whether international troops would secure Lebanon's ports and airports.

Before Rice's departure from Israel, Olmert stepped up Israel's strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, sealing off a Hezbollah stronghold and pounding Beirut with airstrikes. Hezbollah showered rockets into northern Israel.

Israeli forces have also been hammering the Gaza Strip since shortly after the June 25 capture of an Israeli soldier by militants linked to Hamas, which controls the Palestinian government.