After an intense day consumed with resolving their differences over the violence, the leaders demanded that Hezbollah and Hamas release kidnapped Israeli soldiers and end the shelling of Israeli towns. They also told Israel to stop cross-border military operations, withdraw forces from Gaza and free Palestinian ministers and legislators arrested since the latest wave of conflict began last month.

Forged in delicate negotiations, the statement represented a consensus by the leaders of the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan.

The wording allowed the leaders of the world's eight major industrialized powers to read the document in different ways, reflecting varying alliances by summit partners with players in the Middle East and conflicting views over whether Israel was using excessive force in Lebanon.

By levying balanced demands on both Israel and Hezbollah, the leaders sought to bridge differences between the Bush administration's insistence on laying the blame for the crisis on Hezbollah and its backers in the Syrian and Iranian governments, and the view from other capitals, particularly Moscow, that Israel also had to bear some of the responsibility for the worsening conflict.

French President Jacques Chirac told reporters that the summit was calling for a cease-fire, a step that Bush has opposed since the crisis erupted.

Nicholas Burns, the U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said “there was no push by any country for a cease-fire.”

As the working sessions of the annual Group of Eight summit opened, Bush and his colleagues laid the blame for the crisis on “extremist forces” intent on destabilizing the region and said in the communiqué, “Our goal is an immediate end to the current violence, a resumption of security cooperation and of political engagement both among Palestinians and with Israel.”

With the United States and Russia divided initially over how to assess Israel's responsibility for the conflict, the leaders agreed to language declaring, it is “critical that Israel, while exercising the right to defend itself, be mindful of the strategic and humanitarian consequences of its actions. We call upon Israel to exercise utmost restraint, seeking to avoid casualties among innocent civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure and to refrain from acts that would destabilize the Lebanese government.”

The communiqué targets extremists out to “destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace. These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict. The extremists must immediately halt their attacks.”

Chirac, often at odds with Bush, told the president “we share the same views of the issues at stake here” and called for the enforcement of U.N. Security Council resolution 1559, which requires the disarming of Hezbollah and other militias in Lebanon.

In the communiqué, the leaders declared, “The root cause of the problems in the region is the absence of a comprehensive Middle East peace.” They also raised the prospect of an international security force along the Israel-Lebanon border to separate fighting forces, a potentially significant escalation of outside involvement in the volatile region.

The crisis eclipsed initiatives that had long been on Russian President Vladimir Putin's agenda as the meeting's host. As negotiations over the communiqué stretched into early evening, the summit released without fanfare a number of steps, including plans to secure global energy supplies, to fight infectious diseases and to bolster the economies of poorer countries through education reform.

The leaders face a packed agenda, including trade talks and a possible statement on world oil prices today, the last day of the summit.

The other leaders at the summit at a czarist seaside palace near St. Petersburg are British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi.