LONDON (AFP) – Climate change minister Ed Miliband Sunday blamed China for blocking an accord on legally-binding emissions targets and a 50 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 at the Copenhagen summit.

Miliband admitted the results of the Copenhagen conference were “disappointing” but insisted that important progress was made in the fight against global warming.

“We got a lot of commitments, not just from developed countries, but developing countries like China and India as well,” he told Sky News.

“The eventual outcome was disappointing. The most important reason actually is not so much to do with the commitments — because there are actually quite important and good commitments on emissions and finances — but on the issue of it becoming legally binding.”

Efforts to give legal backing to the commitments in the Copenhagen accord met with “impossible resistance from a small number of developing countries, including China, who didn’t want a legal agreement,” he said.

“If leading countries hold out against something like ‘legally binding’ or against the 2050 target of 50 percent reductions in carbon emissions — which was held out against by countries like China — you are not going to get the agreement you want.”

When asked about accusations that the watered-down agreement reached at the UN conference failed to protect poor people in developing countries, Miliband said: “The alternatives were no agreement or the agreement we have.

“The fact is that we have got fast-start finance of 10 billion dollars a year flowing as a result of this agreement.

“We have got important cuts for rich and developing countries in their emissions. We won’t know the precise shape of them until the beginning of February and we are going to have to push for them to be higher.

“But the idea that walking away from agreement would have been better for people facing climate change is frankly ridiculous.”

He added: “Even though there were things we didn’t achieve, the fact is we have got for the first time developing countries coming together and saying that they are going to reduce emissions and the finance is flowing.”