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TOYAKO, Japan (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday hailed the move by G-8 leaders to coalesce behind a broad climate-change strategy, saying in a valedictory to summitry that "significant progress" has been made on global warming.

"In order to address climate change, all major economies must be at the table, and that's what took place today," Bush said at the conclusion of the summit of leading industrialized nations -- talks that he said also strove to advance free trade and combat hunger and disease around the world, particularly in Africa.

The global warming statement represented quite a progression for Bush, who in his first term disputed scientists' assertions about this problem. At his final G-8 summit as president, and heartily backed a declaration saying that greenhouse gas emissions should be cut in half by the middle of the century.

"We made clear, and the other nations agreed, that they must also participate in an ambitious goal," Bush said, "with an interim goal, with interim plans to enable the world to successfully address climate change. And we made significant progress toward a comprehensive approach."

In a statement that he read to reporters here, he also reiterated his position that substantive progress in the climate change area will necessarily hinge on further development of clean energy technology. Developing nations, he said, will need assistance so they can become "good stewards of the environment."

The president praised his fellow summit leaders for their work, not only on climate change but also on advancing the so-called Doha Round of negotiations on opening markets to free trade and on their cooperation with U.S. efforts to help poor nations combat disease and food shortages.

The G-8 nations are the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia.

It was Bush's last G-8 summit, and the meeting here, along with his talks on the sidelines of the summit, presented a mixed scorecard for him to take home. Bush saw fellow G-8 leaders essentially embrace his argument that a comprehensive global warming strategy must include participation by developing nations as well as the leading industrialized democracies.

But he ran into opposition to talk of trade sanctions against President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe for an election that Bush has labeled a "sham" balloting. And he made no headway in resolving differences with Russia over U.S. plans to put a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in a separate talk with reporters that that American defense system "deeply distresses" Moscow and he accused Washington of engaging in "halfhearted negotiations that have come to nothing."

Bush held one-on-one talks with several other world leaders, including China's President Hu Jintao, whom he assured he was excited about going to the Beijing Olympics later this summer. Hu told Bush he was grateful that he hadn't politicized the event because of China's crackdown in Tibet.

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