WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said  yesterday that disappointment over the outcome of the  Copenhagen climate change summit was justified, hardening a  widespread verdict that the conference had been a failure.

“I think that people are justified in being disappointed  about the outcome in Copenhagen,” he said in an interview with  PBS Newshour.

“What I said was essentially that rather than see a  complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got  done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind  of held ground and there wasn’t too much backsliding from where  we were.”

Sweden has labelled the accord Obama helped broker a  disaster for the environment, British Prime Minister Gordon  Brown said the summit was “at best flawed and at worst  chaotic,” and climate change advocates have been even more  scathing in their criticism.

The talks secured bare-minimum agreements that fell well  short of original goals to reduce carbon emissions and stem  global warming, after lengthy negotiations failed to paper over  differences between rich nations and developing economies. Some  singled out China for special blame.

British Environment Minister Ed Miliband wrote in the  Guardian newspaper on Monday China had “hijacked” efforts to  agree to significant reductions in global emissions. Beijing  denied the claim and said London was scheming to divide  developing countries on the climate change issue.

Obama did not point any fingers, but did say the Chinese  delegation was “skipping negotiations” before his personal  intervention.

“At a point where there was about to be complete breakdown,  and the prime minister of India was heading to the airport and  the Chinese representatives were essentially skipping  negotiations, and everybody’s screaming, what did happen was,  cooler heads prevailed,” Obama said.

Obama forged an accord with China, India, Brazil and South  Africa in the conference’s final hours after personally  securing a bilateral meeting with the four nations’ leaders.

“We were able to at least agree on non-legally binding  targets for all countries — not just the United States, not  just Europe, but also for China and India, which, projecting  forward, are going to be the world’s largest emitters,” he  said.