"This was a very big result," Kan told Japanese media late Saturday as two weeks of talks ended in Cancun by agreeing to set up a new fund to manage billions of dollars in aid to poor nations.

"We see this as a very big step forward in our biggest task of bringing the United States and China into an international framework," Kan said.

Japan has firmly stood against a proposed extension of the Kyoto Protocol, calling it unfair because it does not include 70 percent of the world's emissions, with top polluters China and the United States absent.

China, the world's largest emitter, has no obligations under Kyoto as it is considered a developing country. The United States, alone among rich nations, rejected the treaty.

The 1997 treaty, which required the world's wealthy nations to curb carbon emissions, will expire in 2012.

The Cancun agreement called on nations to work on setting up a new round of the Kyoto Protocol but did not obligate countries to be part of it.

The compromise put off until next year's meeting a decision on a successor to the treaty.

Japanese industry had feared that the Kyoto pact would simply be extended, maintaining what they consider an "unfair" greenhouse gas reduction burden on them, the business daily Nikkei said.

Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, cautiously welcomed the Cancun deal.

"We welcome the move because this set a course under which the US and China should be included in discussions on a successor framework," he told Nikkei.

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