The 21 APEC leaders closed this year’s meeting with an agreement on climate change that includes a series of “aspirational goals” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but no sturdy targets are present in the pact.

Aside from discussions targeting global warming, leaders from Pacific Rim nations agreed to revive the Doha Development Round of World Trade Organization negotiations aimed at lowering trade barriers around the globe.

The host of this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who said talks on the sidelines of the Doha Round are “the last best hope for an aggregate multilateral trade agreement.”

Howard tried to convince the leaders of the United States, Russia, China and Japan to adhere to the so-called Sydney Declaration which impels nations to adopt “long-term aspirational goals” for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.

Also, US President George W Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to stop deforestation and slash the amount of energy used during industrial processes, but again no compulsory targets appeared.

“This is the first such agreement involving the major polluters - the United States, China and the Russian Federation,” Howard said Sunday, adding the meeting represents a “very important component along the hard road to reaching a sensible, workable international agreement to cover the period post-Kyoto.”

The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and members of the international community are searching for a replacement, but their efforts are hampered by Australia and the US who criticized the Kyoto treaty for setting limitations only for developed countries.

“What this agreement represents is a proper recognition of the fact that different economies have different needs, have different views and different capacities and that a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach is simply not going to work,” the Australian premier said.

“Kyoto had produced two kinds of countries - those without targets and those who had failed to meet their targets,” Howard quoted Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as saying during the meetings.

Howard also said the APEC made “an urgent request to all countries involved in the Doha process to renew their efforts to achieve an outcome emphasizing that agricultural and industrial products are the two priority areas.”

The progress made by APEC members was outlined by Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe, who said: “At the APEC leaders' meeting this time we got down to earnest discussion on climate change and energy security from the perspectives of how we will be able to secure prosperity for the entire world.”

Another meeting that would tackle the stressful problem of climate change will take place at the end of this month in Washington, President Bush inviting 15 nations to send their envoys at the conference preceding the Bali summit.

The United Nations will head the meeting scheduled to take place in December in the luxurious Indonesian island.