Secretary of State Rice said a U.N. resolution calling for a cease-fire in Lebanon is only “a first step” and an end to all fighting may “take a while.”

“The resolution does not anticipate and does not expect a complete Israeli withdrawal in the first phase,” Ms. Rice said at a news conference in Crawford, Texas, where she was meeting with President Bush yesterday.”It is certainly not the case that probably all violence is going to stop.”

America and France agreed Saturday on a proposed Security Council resolution that calls for an “immediate” end to all attacks by Hezbollah, which America and Israel classify as a terrorist organization, and a halt to “all offensive military operations” by Israel, according to a copy provided by the French mission to the United Nations.

The conflict was sparked by a July 12 cross-border attack by Hezbollah, in which they captured two Israeli soldiers. Ninety-five Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed since the start of the war, the army and police said. In Lebanon, fighting has caused about 700 deaths and 2,707 injured, according to the Lebanese police.

Mr. Bush is scheduled to make a statement on the efforts to end the fighting today at 8 a.m. ahead of new discussions at the Security Council in New York. Ms. Rice said she expects the U.N. resolution will be adopted “in the next day or two.” She called it “the first step, not the only step” in ending the hostilities.

A second resolution would follow to put an international force into southern Lebanon to act as a buffer until the Lebanese military can take control, she said.

While Israel and Lebanon won’t get everything they wanted, Ms. Rice said, the proposal is an “equitable” way to address the crisis and move toward limiting civilian casualties.

President Chirac of France called on all parties involved to take on responsibility for ending the fighting.

“Our aim is to arrive as soon as possible at a sustainable cease-fire through a political agreement that takes into account the concerns of all the parties,” Mr. Chirac said in a statement released by his office.

A senior adviser to Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon, Mohamad Chatah, said the resolution has the “underlying elements” to end the fighting as long as Israel withdraws.

“We have a clear path,” Mr. Chatah said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We are saying the Lebanese army, right after the cease-fire, right after the first resolution, takes charge of the south, takes over military positions at the same time that Israel withdraws to the border.”

Yet Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker said yesterday that the proposal is a gateway to an open-ended violence.

“This plan leaves the door open to war forever,” a Shiite Muslim delegated by Hezbollah to negotiate on the group’s behalf, Nabih Berri, said at a televised press conference.

The reaction of Syria, Hezbollah’s main sponsor along with Iran, also was negative. “This agreement is bad in every sense of the word,” the Syrian foreign minister, Walid Muallem, said on his arrival in the Lebanese northern port city of Tripoli, Lebanon’s national news agency reported.

Israel’s ambassador to America, Daniel Ayalon, said his government will continue military operations until the two Israeli soldiers held by Hezbollah are released and the militant group’s fighters are disarmed.

“Once all these elements are in there, I can guarantee you Israel will cease fire,” Mr. Ayalon said on “Fox News Sunday.”

As the resolution was being debated among diplomats, battles continued across the Israel-Lebanon border. More than 140 Hezbollah rockets hit Israel yesterday, killing at least 15 people at a communal farm in northern city of Kfar Giladi. At least three people were killed when six rockets hit Haifa. Israeli troops and aircraft hit targets north of the border with Lebanon in an operation intended to clear the area of the Hezbollah strongholds and militants.

The American national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, who also is meeting with Mr. Bush at his ranch, said the time needed to impose a cease-fire makes it important to act quickly on a second resolution authorizing an international force that will be deployed to southern Lebanon.

“Our hope is that it would be days, not weeks” to get a second resolution finished, he told reporters in Crawford.

America is asking countries with influence on Hezbollah, specifically Iran and Syria, “to send a clear message that it needs to accept the will of the international community and accept the decision of the Lebanese government,” Mr. Hadley said.

He and Ms. Rice said the reaction to the resolution would make clear the intentions of those involved. “It would tell us something about who wants peace and who does not,” Mr. Hadley said.

Ms. Rice characterized it as a “good basis for ending large-scale hostilities” and as “an opportunity to extend the authority of the Lebanese government throughout its own territory.”