VATICAN CITY -- Vice President Dick Cheney's first meeting with Pope John Paul II came at a time when U.S.-Vatican relations are in a rebuilding phase following the war in Iraq.

Cheney met with the pope in a private audience Jan. 27 and later held talks with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano. The discussions dealt primarily with the current situation in Iraq, the Middle East and international terrorism.

The pope and other Vatican officials argued strongly against the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, but in recent months they have focused on the need for cooperative reconstruction rather than on past differences.

As the pope said in his speech to diplomats Jan. 12, the international community needs to help Iraqis "retake the reins" of their country and establish a real democracy. He and his aides have emphasized the role of the United Nations in this process and in the larger task of "collective security" throughout the world.

The pope and other Vatican experts also have made increasingly strong statements against international terrorism, underlining the need for more effective curbs against terrorist groups.

"In the necessary fight against terrorism, international law is now called to develop legal instruments provided with effective means for the prevention, monitoring and suppression of crime," the pope said in his World Day of Peace message.

But there remains a fundamental difference between the Vatican and the United States over the concept of pre-emptive or "preventive" war as a tool against terrorism.

Before the invasion of Iraq, Vatican officials repeatedly rejected the idea that nations could wage war without responding to a specific act of aggression and without the explicit backing of the United Nations or international treaties, in order to eliminate a potential threat of terrorism.

"On the concept of 'preventive war,' the position of the Holy See has not changed at all," Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, the Vatican equivalent of a foreign minister, said Jan. 24 in a response to questions by Catholic News Service.

"Obviously, defense against terrorism must be preventive to some degree. That doesn't mean shooting first, but rather working so that there is no interest in shooting," the archbishop said.

"All this requires a concerted action by states at various levels, and primarily, in my view, at the cultural level," he said.

If anything, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has bolstered the Vatican's conviction that this war, in particular, did not have legitimacy.

The Vatican does recognize that the use of force to prevent acts of terrorism can sometimes be legitimate, as an extension of the principle of self-defense, but the threat must be specific and well-defined.

"In the face of a clear terrorist threat, there is a duty of prevention. But, of course, this cannot be stretched to mean that the Holy See accepts the idea of preventive war," one highly placed Vatican official explained.

"That would be adopting a principle that goes against the many statements made over the last year," he said.

The Vatican's views were perhaps best illustrated by its very different reactions to the U.S. military actions in Afghanistan in late 2001 and to the invasion of Iraq last year. A Vatican spokesman and other church officials offered qualified support for U.S. attacks against al-Qaida strongholds in Afghanistan, saying the use of force in that situation represented an extension of self-defense against a terrorist organization that could be expected to strike again.

But the same case could not be made for Iraq, and this was underscored by the lack of an international consensus in support of the war, Vatican officials said.

One thing the Vatican and the United States want is reform of the United Nations -- but with different points of emphasis. The pope has spoken generally of restoring to the United Nations its proper role of protecting the international order.

The United States, on the other hand, wants to see the United Nations as a "more action-oriented structure and less a debating structure," especially when it comes to responding to terrorist threats around the world, said one informed U.S. source in Rome.

U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Jim Nicholson, noting the pope's call for new "legal instruments" against terrorism, has organized a conference this spring on that subject, inviting international experts and Vatican officials.

He said in an interview that he sees the topic as fruitful ground for U.S.-Vatican cooperation.

Vatican officials, however, caution that in conducting the "war on terrorism" the United States seems to rely too heavily on short-term military solutions and not enough on political, social and educative steps.

"There's a feeling that there's an imbalance, that more attention should be given to removal of the causes of terrorism and, above all, to education. We need to get at the roots of terrorism," said one Vatican official.

"But there is also understanding that the United States is still probably under the influence of Sept. 11, and that this has resulted in a priority for military action," he said.

Cheney and his Vatican counterparts also discussed the Israeli-Palestinian question, but Vatican officials believe that serious new peace initiatives by the United States probably will come only after the 2004 presidential elections.