The Rome peace conference should have been an opportunity for all sides to sit down and discuss possible ways out of the current crisis. Instead, it was dominated by the deaths, only a few hours before talks started, of four UN peacekeepers, killed by an Israeli bombardment in Lebanon. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan branded the killings an "apparently deliberate targeting" by the Israeli air force -- much to Jerusalem's disbelief and consternation.

And, aside from issuing a vaguely worded statement in support of an international peacekeeping force along the Israeli-Lebanese border zone, the summit was widely branded a failure. No government committed troops, and the non-attendees were conspicuous by their absence. Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas: None turned up to Rome's peaceloving talk-shop. The German press on Thursday considers the allegations against the Israeli military, and questions the rationale for the conference in Rome.

"Did the Israeli air force deliberately attack a clearly marked UN post which had been there for years, thereby killing four unarmed UN observers?" asks the left-wing daily Die Tagezeitung on its front page. Despite evidence presented to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, which prompted him to talk of an "apparently deliberate targeting" of UN troops, the paper urges caution, reminding readers that UN outposts have been attacked before. In the last 28 years, it writes, over 100 people have been killed in attacks on UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon). However: "What cannot completely be dismissed is the speculation that Israel deliberately targeted a UN post on the evening before the Rome conference to prevent any disagreeable decisions there." Again, the paper suggests this is rather unlikely, especially if readers recall that Israel in any case continues to enjoy US and German support for military strikes against Hezbollah. All that can be said for certain is that "the killing of the four UN observers will have a deterrent effect on all states who may in the future be asked by the UN to provide soldiers and civil personnel for a new and better-mandated UN force for deployment on the Israeli-Lebanese border."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung also notes that Israel has attacked UN posts before. One hundred and five Lebanese were killed when they took shelter in a UN post bombed by the IDF in 1996: "Not deliberate, said Israel at the time. That was ten years ago. A tragic accident, says the government in Jerusalem today as well, after four UN soldiers joined the list of the victims of the new war in the Middle East." One possible explanation for Annan's fury on Wednesday, the paper writes, is that the UN chief believes Israel must know exactly where all UN troops are stationed -- precisely because of the 1996 attack. So what's the explanation? Coming just a few hours before the Rome peace conference began, is it possible that Israel would "want to torpedo these efforts?" No, insists the paper, such a conspiracy theory isn't plausible.

But the Süddeutsche does think peacekeepers sent to the Israeli-Lebanese border will be entering a minefield. Not only is there the danger of Israeli 'friendly fire', but Hezbollah can be expected to continue firing its Katyusha rockets. Furthermore, Hezbollah, which has cultivated an image as "the liberator of Lebanon," is supported by "a broad resistance, which feeds off feelings of injured pride."

Financial Times Deutschland thinks Kofi Annan was too quick to brand the attack as "deliberate." "Annan should be wary of such overhasty judgements. He insinuates that Israel carried out a planned killing -- in other words: murder." But the facts remain too thin on the ground to justify such a serious allegation, the paper writes. "Therefore Annan's words, with every understanding of his personal sadness, remain unacceptable."

"If he has explicit evidence which supports his allegation, then he should lay it on the table. If not, he must wait for the investigation over the coming weeks." After all, despite reports suggesting the UN soldiers appealed repeatedly for the bombing to be halted, mistakes happen during war. "Such mistakes are monstrous, but military history teaches us that they always occur. A deliberate killing of UN observers is by contrast hardly conceivable," not least because "Israel knows the catastrophic consequences such an event would have for its image around the world."

Conservative daily Die Welt agrees: "The deaths of the four soldiers damages Israeli interests and puts its government under pressure. Why would it have ordered (the killings) and thereby weakened itself?" The paper insists Israel continues to try and avoid civilian casualties. "Israel has the power to reduce Lebanon and the Gaza Strip to ash and rubble in a matter of hours. Yet the character of the state and the history of its people prevent such devastation."

Finally, Ewald Stein, editor of the business daily Handelsblatt, has a few tough words for the do-gooders in Rome in his front page editorial. "The meeting in Rome was doomed to fail from the start. This is confirmed in particular by the list of participants." Ultimately, the states and political groups involved in this conflict weren't there. "Diplomats from Israel and Lebanon, representatives of the Palestinians and Hezbollah" -- they weren't involved. "This conference was at most an event which played to the gallery. It was supposed to intensively engage the international audience in the peace efforts." The Rome conference certainly won't be the last during this conflict, writes Stein, but nothing will be achieved unless Syria and Iran, which provide Hezbollah with weapons, are brought to the table. This demands a change of tone in Washington, which "can't continue to be gagged in its dealing with Iran and Syria by the vocabulary of 'rogue state' politics," argues Stein.