The issue was one of several topics the two officials discussed shortly after Gates arrived in Israel on the third leg of his Middle Eastern tour. He has already been to Egypt and Jordan.

It was the first time in almost eight years that a U.S. secretary of defense visited Israel. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has come frequently, but she focuses on attempts to advance the peace process, while Gates is expected to focus on the threats in the region and what to do if there is no peace.

Uzi Arad, director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and a former director of intelligence at the Mossad, told United Press International the visit has "dramatic significance."

On the regional, geo-political level, "We are in a dangerous period." He expected also "a laundry list" of bilateral subjects from cooperation in developing anti-missile missiles to joint military maneuvers, closer ties between Israel and NATO, and intelligence and money matters.

At a news conference at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, Gates said they had reviewed security challenges in the region and talked at length about Iran.

For Israel, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat. Peretz said that 2007 "is a critical year for diplomatic efforts to halt the Iranian program."

He called for "real steps to foil Iran's malicious and dangerous intentions. The diplomatic channel is preferable and should be exhausted, but other options cannot yet be ruled out."

However, Gates said diplomacy "seems to be working." He cited two U.N. resolutions and the international community's united stance in telling Iran what it needs to do with respect to its nuclear program.

"These things don't work overnight but it seems to me, clearly, the preferable course (is) to keep our focus on the diplomatic initiatives and particularly because of the united front of the international community at this point," he added.

According to Arad, Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, never visited Israel partly because he focused on Iraq, but there were also tensions in Israel's relations with the Pentagon. U.S. officials have been suspicious of Israel's ties with Communist China. The United States forced Israel to cancel a multimillion-dollar agreement to provide China with the Falcon airborne system. The United States said that system could endanger American pilots' lives while in that area. Later the Pentagon fumed over Israeli moves to upgrade drones sold to China. Eventually the Pentagon reportedly refused to deal with senior Defense Ministry officials.

Most of those problems have been resolved and the visit signified "a return to routine," Arad said.

At Wednesday's meeting Israel presented its military capabilities, its needs and talked about cooperation, Peretz said. He did not provide details, but at a workshop on ballistic missiles and rockets held at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday, experts outlined threats for which they must prepare.

The Arrow missile interceptor has been tested against lone missile attacks but not against a barrage of ballistic missiles. The experts expect the enemy to fire barrages in which only some of the warheads would carry explosives or a nuclear weapon. The problem is how to pick out and intercept the dangerous projectiles hurtling towards Israel.

The Scuds that Iraq fired in the 1991 war disintegrated in the air and tumbled around before hitting the ground. That is why none of the Patriot missiles fired at them intercepted any, said Reuven Pedatzur of the Strategic Dialogue Center at the Netanya College. Israeli experts predicted its enemies would now try to develop warheads that would purposely follow a meandering trajectory.

The workshop was open to the public, so the presentations were very general and did not touch on Israel's plans. However, the defense establishment is trying to develop means to intercept medium and short-range rockets that the Arrow -- built for longer-range attacks -- cannot stop.

During the Second Lebanon War Hezbollah fired some 4,000 Katyusha rockets and paralyzed northern Israel. Palestinians have been firing rockets that the head of Israel's anti-aircraft forces, Brig. Gen. Daniel Miloh, said were produced by welding irrigation pipes. "When there is one (such rocket) it's not terrible. When there are 10,000 they become a strategic threat," he said.

Developing interceptors, even for "flying pipes," is costly, and the price of each missile interceptor would be much higher than the price of the Qassam itself, experts said.

Since the United States funded much of the Arrow program and helped develop a laser beam that was supposed to melt incoming rockets, it seems a safe bet that Israel was hoping for U.S. aid in developing the new systems as well.

"We examined joint projects," Peretz told reporters. The U.S. Defense Department and Israel's Defense Ministry have reached "an understanding on the answers we can produce" in order to cope with the threats, he added.

Joint teams are expected to look into U.S. plans to sell precision guided munitions to Saudi Arabia, and Peretz said he expected U.S. help in preserving Israel's qualitative advantage over all the threats in the Middle East.

Both countries have held also joint military exercises, and Miloh said the cooperation with the U.S. army has been "exceptional."

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers took part in such exercises in Israel using more advanced equipment than Israel has, and that helped "interoperability" between the two forces, Miloh added.

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