PARIS (AP) – World powers pledged $7.6 billion in loans, donations and other help Thursday for a fragile Western-backed government in Lebanon that faces ruinous debt and paralyzing sectarian street violence.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora took a risk by leaving his fortified compound in Beirut to attend a one-day conference on developing ways to help Lebanon recover from last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah and address its $40 billion in debt.

As the donors met in Paris, government and opposition supporters clashed at a university campus back in Beirut in new violence spilling over from Lebanon’s political crisis. The army, struggling to restore order, imposed a nighttime curfew. At least three people were killed and dozens injured.

Saniora told the Paris conference his nation was on the verge of a deep recession.

“Your support will be essential in seeing Lebanon through,” Saniora told the conference. “The cost of failure is too great to contemplate.”

Saniora stands between the West and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants trying to bring down his government. Thursday’s conference had an urgent tone, with some diplomats and leaders hoping to give Saniora tangible bargaining power in his power struggle with Hezbollah.

“I think this goes beyond the wildest dreams of everyone for the success of the conference,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said of the pledge total. “I think when people really started thinking about what was at stake here … they decided that this statement had to be made,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Rice announced $770 million in new U.S. aid, more than three times the Bush administration’s previous commitment.

The United States regards Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. U.S. law forbids funding for terror groups, restrictions that led to a cutoff of direct U.S. aid for the Palestinian government following the election victory of the Hamas militants exactly a year ago.

The Bush administration has since found ways to segregate money for the Western-backed Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, but it is not clear what the administration would do if the Saniora government falls in Lebanon.

Rice would not give a direct answer when asked if an elected Hezbollah-led government could still collect the U.S. pledge.

“We are dealing with the duly elected government of Lebanon, of Prime Minister Saniora,” Rice said at a press conference. “I don’t have any desire to get into hypotheticals about Lebanon’s future.”

Saniora is fighting for his political life against Hezbollah, a military and political organization that has organized deadly street protests.

The Hezbollah-led opposition demands a share of power in the Cabinet and effective veto on key decisions, or it wants the government ousted and new elections held. Saniora has refused to quit or cede power. The opposition’s six ministers in the 24-member Cabinet quit in November.

The opposition has been camped out in front of the prime minister’s office in downtown Beirut and staged several protests to press its demands since Dec. 1.

Uncertainty over Lebanon’s political future did not appear to hold down pledges, estimated before the conference at about $5 billion. Much of the money is tied to promised financial reforms in Saniora’s government.

The host, French President Jacques Chirac, played auctioneer, pressuring participants to give. He gently chided Japan for not giving more than $11 million.

“Be brief, be good and be generous,” he said at one point, as the more than 40 nations and financial institutions took turns in announcing their aid.

Saudi Arabia said it would commit $1 billion in development funding and an additional $100 million as a direct grant to the Lebanese government. France, a former colonial power in Lebanon, put forward $650 million, much of it in loans. The European Union committed $522 million in loans or aid.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said the conference sent a signal of political as well as economic support for Saniora’s government and his proposals to reduce public debt.

“This government does have a credible reform program,” she told reporters.

Saniora’s critics said donors would worsen Lebanon’s debt and be pouring good money after bad.

Lebanon’s $40 billion in state debt is equivalent to about 185 percent of its annual economic output, making it one of the world’s most indebted nations.

Tiny Lebanon had experienced promising economic growth in the past decade, as the scars faded from a 15-year civil war. But much of the progress was undone by the summer war with Israel, which wasted towns in southern Lebanon, and by weeks of political deadlock that have closed shops and businesses.

Lebanon’s economy is nearly at a standstill, with jobs, capital and trained workers leaving for better prospects overseas. This was the third in a series of Paris donor conferences since 1998. A separate session in Stockholm, Sweden, in August netted pledged of about $1 billion for postwar reconstruction.

Lebanon – a country of 4 million people, 17 religious sects, an educated class and a free-market economy – has historically been a Middle East battleground.

Iran and the United States had a proxy conflict in Lebanon in the 1980s when a series of kidnappings and suicide bombings in Beirut, blamed on pro-Iranian militants, killed more than 270 Americans. The United States pulled its Marines from the city.

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Associated Press writers John Leicester and Jamey Keaten contributed to this report.