While China's Premier Wen Jiabao insisted his government had played an "important and constructive" role, Britain said the meeting had lurched into farce and pointed the finger of blame at Beijing.

And the summit host, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, rapped the lower-level negotiators for failing to make headway in nearly two weeks of talks and then leaving their masters with too much to do at the climax.

Brown said lessons must be learned.

"Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down those talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries," he said.

While Brown refrained from naming countries, his climate change minister Ed Miliband said China had led a group of countries that "hijacked" the negotiations which had at times presented "a farcical picture to the public".

The agreement finally put together by a select group of leaders set no target for greenhouse-gas emissions cuts and is not legally binding -- omissions Miliband blamed on Beijing.

"We did not get an agreement on 50 percent reductions in global emissions by 2050 or on 80 percent reductions by developed countries," he wrote in The Guardian.

"Both were vetoed by China, despite the support of a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries."

Miliband's aides told the newspaper that Sudan, Bolivia and other left-wing Latin American governments were included in the criticism.

China, the world's top polluter, doggedly resisted pressure for outside scrutiny of its emissions.

Wen however rejected any suggestion it had played a negative role and said China had "expressed its fullest sincerity and made its utmost effort."

The Copenhagen Accord set "long-term goals" for the global community in addressing climate change, Wen said, according to comments released by the foreign ministry.

"This is the result of the efforts from all sides and has wide approval."

France's Prime Minister Francois Fillon, on a visit to Beijing, trod delicately but showed Europe's frustration with the outcome.

"France, like all of the European Union, would have wanted the Copenhagen Accord to go a bit further," he said.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said he was a "little disappointed" and blamed in part the UN system and attempts to win consensus among so many divergent nations.

Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said some of the countries at the talks had not been ready for an agreement that would have satisfied Europe.

"The EU was ready, the world wasn't ready and that's the failure," he said.

Carlgren said the process had to continue because "a solution for the climate is really urgently needed."

The comments echoed those of US President Barack Obama who acknowledged that all of the world's polluters would quickly have to do more after the "extremely difficult and complex negotiations".

Rasmussen, heavily criticised for his stewardship of the summit of around 130 leaders, said the agreement was "better than nothing".

The Dane said the conference had become quagmired before the arrival of the leaders for Friday's finale with negotiators having made negligible progress since its start on December 7.

"When the leaders arrived, there was not even a framework agreement to discuss and we had 24 hours, which is too little time, to create a text which should have been negotiated during the two weeks of the conference," he told Danish television.

As failure loomed, Rasmussen helped steer negotiations involving the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa and major European countries that resulted in the final agreement.

The accord promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout, and set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Scientists say hundreds of millions of people are threatened in the next few decades by worsening drought, floods, storms and rising sea levels as a result of rising temperatures.

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