China has hit back at claims by a British minister that it stood in the way of an agreement at the UN summit in Copenhagen.

Climate change secretary Ed Miliband, writing in the Guardian, said that China had "hijacked" the summit, vetoing two agreements on limiting emissions.

The Xinhua state news agency reported that Jiang Yu, Beijing's foreign ministry spokesperson, said that statements from "certain British politicians" were "plainly a political scheme".

She said that the aim was "to shirk responsibilities that should be assumed towards developing countries, and to provoke discord among developing countries".

"This scheme will come to nothing," she concluded.

The summit of 192 nations ended without a legally binding agreement.

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