SYDNEY, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Asia-Pacific nations, including key polluter China, will accept for the first time global goals to reduce greehouse gas emissions, a draft statement from an Asia-Pacific leaders summit showed on Saturday.

"We call for a post-2012 international climate change arrangement ... that strengthens, broadens and deepens the current arrangement and leads to reduced global emissions of greenhouse houses," the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' declaration said.

The existing U.N. pact on climate change, known by the Kyoto Protocol but which excludes the United States, China and Australia, expires in 2012.

The APEC leaders, set to sign the agreement during their two-day summit ending on Sunday, will agree to set a long-term "aspirational targets", not binding targets, for emission reductions, the draft showed.

According to the draft statement, APEC leaders will aim to improve energy efficiency within the region by at least 25 percent in 2030 from levels in 2005.

They will also aim to increase forest areas within the region by 20 million hectares by 2020.

Host Australian Prime Minister John Howard placed climate change at the top of the APEC agenda, seeking a post-Kyoto Protocol consensus to be called the "Sydney Declaration".

Green groups have said the APEC summit would be a failure if it did not agree to binding greenhouse gas reduction targets, but Howard has said no binding targets will be set.

Developing economies -- led by China and Indonesia -- are strongly opposed to any wording that commits them to binding targets and some say they would prefer climate change goals be handled at a U.N. meeting later this month.

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