By Agnieszka Flak and Barbara Lewis
DURBAN (Reuters) - U.N. climate change talks agreed a pact Sunday that for the first time would force all the biggest polluters to take action to slow the pace of global warming.
The deal follows years of failed attempts to impose legally-binding, international cuts on emerging giants, such as China and India, as well as rich nations like the United States.
The developed world had already accepted formal targets under a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of next year, although Washington never ratified its commitment.
The package of deals extends Kyoto, whose first phase of cuts expires at the end of 2012, begins negotiations for a new legally binding treaty to be decided by 2015 and to come into force by 2020. It also creates a Green Climate Fund to help poor nations tackle global warming.
After days of sometimes emotional debate, the chairwoman of the United Nations climate talks hailed the four separate accords that made up the package of deals.
"We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come," South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said.
"We have made history," she said, bringing the hammer down on more than two weeks of sometimes fractious talks in the South African port of Durban, the longest in two decades of U.N. climate talks.
Britain's Energy and Climate Secretary Chris Huhne said the result was "a great success for European diplomacy."
"We've managed to bring the major emitters like the U.S., India and China into a roadmap which will secure an overarching global deal," he said.
The European Union pushed hard for strong wording on legal force in the final agreement, in the face of opposition from the world's three biggest emitters -- the United States, China and India -- welcomed the deal.
"We think that we had the right strategy, we think that it worked," EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said. "The big thing is that all big economies, now all parties have to commit in the future in a legal way and that's what we came here for."
U.S. HAPPY
The Durban talks had been due to wrap up Friday, but dragged into a second extra day Sunday because of disputes over how to phrase the legal commitment.
"In the end, it ended up quite well," said U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern. "We got the kind of symmetry that we had been focused on since the beginning of the Obama administration. This had all the elements that we were looking for."
Brazil, one of the globe's emerging economic powers, said it too was pleased with the result.
"I am relieved we have what we came here to get. We have a robust outcome, an excellent text about a new phase in the international fight against climate change. It clearly points to action," said Brazil's climate envoy Luiz Alberto Figueiredo.
India's Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan, who gave an impassioned speech to the conference denouncing what she said was unfair pressure on Delhi to compromise, said her country had only reluctantly agreed to the accord.
"We've had very intense discussions. We were not happy with reopening the text but in the spirit of flexibility and accommodation shown by all, we have shown our flexibility... we agree to adopt it," she said.
But small island states, which risk being swamped by rising sea levels and extreme weather systems caused by global warming, complained Sunday's agreement was still not strong enough.
"I would have wanted to get more, but at least we have something to work with. All is not lost yet," said Selwin Hart, chief negotiator on finance for the coalition of small states at the conference.
(Reporting by Nina Chestney, Barbara Lewis, Agnieszka Flak, Andrew Allan, Michael Szabo and Stian Reklev; editing by Jon Boyle)
