Despite skepticism from Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, three influential United States senators from both political parties on Sunday called for the United States to consider carving out a no-flight zone in Libya to prevent Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from massacring the rebels trying to overthrow him.

But the Obama administration continued to resist such appeals.

“Lots of people throw around phrases like no-fly zone — they talk about it as though it’s just a video game,” William M. Daley, the new White House chief of staff, said in at appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” television news program.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, challenged Mr. Gates’s admonition that establishing a no-flight zone required the United States to attack Libya’s antiaircraft installations and other air defenses.

“Well, that’s actually not the only option for what one could do ," Mr. Kerry said, in what sounded like a rebuke to a cabinet member, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “One could crater the airports and the runways and leave them incapable of using them for a period of time.”