Rice said it remained 'urgent' that the violence be halted, but added that Hezbollah cannot be left in a position to carry out attacks against the Israel in the future and provoke a crisis like the one that erupted last week.
'A ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo,' Rice told reporters. 'That would be a guarantee of future violence.'
'We do seek an end to the current violence, and we seek it urgently,' Rice said. 'More than that, we also seek to address the root causes of that violence so that a real and endurable peace can be established.'
Rice is scheduled to depart the United States on Sunday for a trip to the Middle East seeking a diplomatic resolution to the fighting in Lebanon that has claimed hundreds of lives in 10 days.
She said she will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She will also travel to Rome to meet with the 'Lebanon core group,' which consists of US, UN, European and Middle East officials.
Rice said the United States will work for political conditions in Lebanon so the government can be more effective in ensuring that Hezbollah can no longer have armed influence it currently enjoys.
A UN Security Council resolution calling for disarming Hezbollah must be put into action, she said.
The United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization backed by Iran and Syria and has called on Damascus to pressure the militant group to release two abducted Israeli soldiers.
The United States is working with other countries to alleviate human suffering caused by Israel's assault on Lebanese targets, Rice said.
Israel has agreed to allow a 'humanitarian corridor' in Lebanon so aid can be sent in to civilians and the United States is preparing to provide humanitarian aid to Lebanese civilians, she said.
Rice stuck to the US government's stand that Hezbollah was to blame for the flare-up with its abduction of two Israeli soldiers, making plain that Washington sees a chance to curb Hezbollah's influence on Israel's border.
The world may be seeing 'the birth pains of a new Middle East,' she told reporters in Washington.
'Whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one,' Rice said.
With Israeli forces massed at the southern Lebanese border Friday, Rice said she was confident that Israel was not seeking a broader confrontation.
'The Israelis have said they have no desire to widen this conflict and I take them at their word,' she said.
Rice spoke with reporters after returning from New York, where she met with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and a UN assessment team that returned from the region this week.
Annan has been seeking to create an international peacekeeping force to deploy to southern Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border, from where the militants carried out their raid on the Israeli military outpost and launch missiles into Israel.
Rice said the United States was examining the possibility of an international force but that US soldiers were unlikely to play a role on Lebanese territory.
'We are looking at what kind of international assistance force makes sense, but I do not think that it is anticipated that US ground forces are expected for that force,' she said.
Rice rebuffed criticism that the United States has acted too slowly to halt the conflict, saying she had been deeply involved from the beginning but that she had to lay the diplomatic groundwork to seek a lasting solution before going to the region.
'I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn't have been clear what I was shuttling to do,' Rice said.
