An Anglican Communion report released yesterday urged those involved in last year's consecration of an openly gay Episcopal Church bishop in New Hampshire to apologize and called for a moratorium on blessings of same-sex unions and elections of other gay bishops here and in the Anglican Church of Canada.

At the same time, the Lambeth Commission report asked conservative African bishops to apologize for intervening in Episcopal dioceses.

"We cannot avoid the conclusion," the report read, "that all have acted in ways incompatible with the Communion principle of interdependence, and our fellowship together has suffered immensely as a result."

While saying that events of the past year have had a "crippling" effect, the 93-page report urged the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the church, to exercise "very considerable caution" in inviting or admitting gay Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson of Concord, N.H., to any Anglican meeting.

The overall tenor of the report, ordered last year after approval of Robinson's ordination at the Episcopal Church's general convention, was one of reconciliation and healing. The commission had been charged with finding "how to maintain the highest degree of communion possible" among its national churches scattered among 164 countries.

But if the immediate response to the report is an indication, there is a long way yet to go.

Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold III, leader of the Episcopal Church, the American arm of the Anglican Communion, expressed "regret [for] how difficult and painful actions of our church have been in many provinces of our Communion, and the negative repercussions that have been felt by brother and sister Anglicans."

But Griswold offered no apology for presiding at Robinson's consecration in November and affirmed the contributions of gays and lesbians in all aspects of the Episcopal church.

"I regret," Griswold said in a statement, "that there are places within our Communion where it is unsafe for them to speak out of the truth of who they are."

Church conservatives were quick to respond.

The Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan Jr., bishop of the Pittsburgh diocese, said Griswold's remarks "bode very poorly for the Communion."

"We are heading into a cultural war of epic proportions," said Duncan, moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, a group of some 800 parishes formed in the past year in response to the Episcopal Church's so-called "innovations" of gay ordination and same-sex blessings. Duncan was in London with other network leaders for the report's release.

A statement released by the network said it had "strong concerns" about the Lambeth Commission report's failure to discipline for the Episcopal Church. And while recognizing the report's call for unity in the communion, the statement said, "We cannot, in good conscience ... support such unity at the expense of truth."

Allen C. Guelzo, an Episcopal priest and professor at Gettysburg College who has written extensively on the history of conflict in the Episcopal Church, compared the report to an umpire of a game that has collapsed into chaos.

"The rules remain the same as before and the game should go on," said Guelzo, a member of the board of directors of the church's historical society.

"The assumption is that no transcendent authority is at stake here, only the sense that we're all family and all need to muddle along together," Guelzo said. "This will not satisfy conservatives."

In fact, the African Anglican bishops, most of whom are conservative in their biblical beliefs, are holding their first conclave in Lagos, Nigeria, next week. The African provinces represent at least a third of the world's more than 70 million Anglicans.

In recent years, some African Anglican archbishops have been willing to provide oversight to unhappy conservative Episcopal parishes in liberal dioceses. In mid-August, for example, three parishes within the Diocese of Los Angeles decided to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Church of Uganda.

Robinson's election and consecration, the Lambeth report said, occurred despite "the full knowledge" that many within the Anglican Communion would not receive or recognize as a bishop someone in a same-gender union.

The report recommended that the Episcopal Church provide -- within the sources of Scripture, apostolic tradition and reflection -- a report on how someone in a same-gender union "may be considered eligible to lead the flock of Christ."

Through a spokesman, Robinson declined comment.

In its conclusion, the report appealed to all parties to seek ways of reconciliation.

However, it said "there remains a very real danger that we will not choose to walk together.

"Should the call to halt and find ways of continuing in our present communion not be heeded, then we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart."