Britain's Sunday Telegraph described the meeting aas "A historic climate summit ... for the extent of its failure."

US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown "did their best to put a positive spin on it but Copenhagen was a disaster," the paper said.

Delegates had passed the Copenhagen Accord Saturday after nearly two weeks of frantic talks on limiting global warming.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference had reached an 11th-hour, non-binding deal assembled by a small group of countries, including United States and China, after it became clear the summit was in danger of failure.

It set out a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) but did not spell out the important stepping stones -- global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 -- or impose compliance provisions.

Britain's The Sunday Times, was similarly unimpressed.

"They managed to sign a deal -- eventually. But it was one that won't do much to stop global warming," it said.

In the United States, The Washington Times called the summit a "flop" and referred to Friday as "Obama's cold day in Denmark."

"The promised treaty -- billed with the characteristic understatement of the alarmist community as 'the single most important piece of paper in the world today' -- was an anticlimax," it said.

The Washington Post noted that many of the details of the accord had yet to be set but it welcomed a commitment by developing countries to a verification regime as "an important step".

In host nation Denmark, the conservative daily Berlingske Tidende said the meeting had been "a catastrophic defeat for the good intention of saving the planet."

World leaders had not shown any willingness to reach an agreement, it said, accusing UN chief Ban Ki-moon of being more interested complaining how "little he had slept and eaten during the last 24 hours than to take leadership."

The meeting gave the United Nations reason for a "thorough examination of its conscience", it said, adding it had shown the poor state of international cooperation.

The largest Danish daily, Jyllands-Posten, said the meeting heralded a new world order.

"The big players of the former world order must open their eyes to a new reality: Europe is having trouble making its voice heard and China is showing its muscles," it said.

France's Le Monde headlined a piece on the often-heated talks of more than 130 world leaders: "The failure of the Copenhagen or the limits of world government".

"Negotiated in its final version mainly between China and the United States, the accord established the marginalisation of Europe," it said.

And it too noted the "rising power of China".

The "fight against climate change is frozen," said Spain's right-leaning El Mundo as an Indian Express headline above a picture of three sleeping delegates read: "No big deal, only a face saver at the end."

Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said developing countries were using climate change to extract money from their richer counterparts and Copenhagen had merely been the stage "for a fight for redistribution".

The summit promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout, although details of the plan are still to be released.

The Berliner Morgenpost however called for "hope despite the disappointment".

And Germany's Bild am Sonntag looked for a "new spirit" at the follow-up meeting in Bonn in June, to be hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The next conference would succeed only if the interests of developing countries were taken more into account, it said.

And then, it added, "the climate chancellor could become Mother Planet."

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