Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Asia-Pacific leaders conceded a binding global-warming accord at next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen is out of reach and aimed to strike a political deal that will push a more comprehensive deal down the road.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders gathered for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore agreed on a two-step approach to negotiating a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol presented by Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, who is leading the group overseeing the United Nations-sponsored climate talks.

“Even if we may not hammer out the last dots of a legally binding instrument, I do believe a political binding agreement with specific commitment to mitigation and finance provides a strong basis for immediate action in the years to come,” Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen flew overnight to Singapore to brief the group on the status of the talks. The APEC meeting is the last major gathering of world leaders before the start of the climate summit on Dec. 7 in the Danish capital.

There was an “assessment by the leaders that it was unrealistic to expect a full, internationally legally binding agreement to be negotiated between now and when Copenhagen starts in 22 days,” Michael Froman, Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, told reporters. They thought “it was important that Copenhagen be an important step forward.”

Lowered Expectations

The statements by members of a group that includes the world’s two largest emitters, the U.S. and China, scale back expectations for the Copenhagen meeting, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries set a deadline to devise a successor to the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which expires in 2012. Two years of talks have stalled as developing countries call on richer nations to cut output first.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said a political agreement on climate change can give impetus to further negotiations, his chief aide, Arkady Dvorkovich, told reporters. “The heads of state said they are ready to strike a political agreement,” the aide said.

A decision on an additional meeting to continue climate negotiations will likely be made in Copenhagen, UNFCCC spokesman John Hay said today. There is already a June meeting scheduled in Bonn and a summit planned in Mexico City in November 2010.

Rasmussen proposed a new strategy to reach a binding agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. The outcome in Copenhagen should be a 5-8 page document with “precise language of a comprehensive political agreement,” he said. Negotiations to come up with a binding legal treaty would then continue.

‘Off the Hook’

“We are not aiming to let anyone off the hook,” Rasmussen said. “We are trying to create a framework that will allow everybody to commit.”

Climate negotiations have been hung up by disagreements between developed and emerging economies on binding emissions targets. UN officials have previously said a treaty was unlikely to emerge from the Copenhagen summit.

Obama said that it was important not to make “the perfect the enemy of the good,” Froman said. The U.S. president said the best option for pursuing a global climate accord was to “see if we could reach the sort of accord that the Danish prime minister laid out that would have immediate operational impact” as a step in ongoing negotiations, Froman said.

Rasmussen’s report to APEC leaders came at a breakfast meeting arranged in the last 36 hours. Climate change was among the main topics on the agenda for the APEC forum, whose member account for about half the world’s economy.

The meeting was organized by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

China’s Role

China’s President Hu Jintao called climate change “a grave challenge to mankind” and pledged to work for “positive outcomes” in Copenhagen during a speech today to APEC leaders. China has pledged to cut emissions in proportion to economic growth, without giving specific goals or saying whether he would include it in a global agreement.

The world’s most populous nation is key to proposals for reducing global emissions. Without new international limits on greenhouse gases, annual discharges will surge 40 percent in the 2007-2030 period to 40.2 billion tons, with more than half of the increase coming from China, the Paris-based International Energy Agency has estimated.

“Major polluters” must be included in any agreement to combat climate change and reduce emissions, Pia Ahrenkilde- Hansen, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said today.

Industrialized nations want developing countries such as China and India to outline programs that will curb output of heat-trapping gases. The two fastest-growing major economies baulk at binding emission targets because their energy usage is projected to rise as more people are lifted out of poverty.

U.S. Reaffirmation

In Tokyo on Nov. 13, Obama reaffirmed the U.S. is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 and endorsed proposals to reduce global emissions by 50 percent that same year.

APEC leaders discussed dropping the 50 percent reduction target from their final summit statement, a member of the Chinese delegation said in a telephone interview.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend the summit in Copenhagen, a government spokesman said today in Berlin.

“We shouldn’t set the bar too low,” German deputy government spokesman Christoph Steegmans said. “Copenhagen must become an important milestone on the way to a decisive accord next year. Nobody can shirk their responsibility.”

Obama hasn’t decided whether he will attend the Copenhagen meeting, Froman said. Denmark last week sent letters inviting all 191 government leaders of the United Nations to attend the Dec. 7-18 summit.

To contact the reporters on this story: Julianna Goldman in Singapore at jgoldman6@bloomberg.netDaniel Ten Kate in Singapore at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 16, 2009 07:02 EST