BEIJING: Asian giants China and Indonesia have hailed the Copenhagen UN climate summit outcome, despite its cool reception from aid agencies and campaigners. Beijing’s foreign minister said it was a new beginning, and Indonesia’s leader said he was pleased with the result.

Earlier, US President Barack Obama defended the accord he helped broker with China and other main powers. The non-binding pact, called the Copenhagen Accord, was not adopted by consensus at the summit in Denmark.

Instead, after two weeks of frantic negotiations, the 193-nation conference ended yesterday with delegates merely taking note of the deal.

The accord looks unlikely to contain temperature rises to within the 2 degrees Celsius threshold that UN scientists say is needed to avert serious climate change.

It includes a recognition to limit temperature rises to less than 2 degrees Celsius and promises to deliver $30 billion of aid for developing nations over the next three years.

The agreement outlines a goal of providing $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change. It also includes a method for verifying industrialised nations’ reduction of emissions. The US had insisted that China dropped its resistance to this measure.

China’s Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, praised the summit in a statement which said: “Developing and developed countries are very different in their historical emissions responsibilities and current emissions levels, and in their basic national characteristics and development stages.”Therefore, they should shoulder different responsibilities and obligations in fighting climate change.” “The Copenhagen conference is not a destination but a new beginning,” he added.

His upbeat note was echoed by Indonesia, ranked the world’s third-largest polluter after the US and China, if the effects of deforestation are taken into account.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in a statement on his website: “Indonesia is pleased, as [we have] taken a wholehearted stance to save our Earth, to save the children in our country,” reports AFP news agency. Environmental campaigners and aid agencies have branded the deal a toothless failure.

But the head of the Nobel-winning UN panel of climate scientists said today that the outcome of the summit was a start, though he urged countries to make it binding.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said: “We will have to build on it. We will have to make sure it moves quickly towards the status of a legally binding agreement and therefore I think the task for the global community is cut out.” Germany will host the next climate change conference in six months in Bonn, to follow up the work of the Copenhagen summit. The final outcome is supposed to be sealed at a conference in Mexico City at the end of 2010.

US President Barack Obama defended the deal after arriving back in Washington yesterday.