SAINT PETERSBURG, Russia, July 15 (Xinhua) -- Russian and U.S. trade negotiators on Saturday failed to seal a deal on Russia's entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) before the Group of Eight (G8) summit.

    "A final agreement has not been reached, but significant progress was made," Sean Spicer, spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, told the press.

    A Kremlin spokesman said talks would keep going but gave no details. "The Russian-American negotiations are continuing and will continue," Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing.

    Schwab had led her negotiation team to discuss entry matters with Russian counterparts since the middle of the week, and the talks lasted till early Saturday morning without reaching an understanding on admitting U.S. farm products into the Russian market, a U.S. source said.

    The talks reached a breakthrough on Thursday on financial services, but failed to reach consensus on trade in farm produce, protection of intellectual property rights and duties on aircraft imports.

    "We weren't able to find a solution on the package we were discussing," Russian trade negotiator Maxim Medvedkov said.

    U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez on Thursday urged Russia to do more to protect intellectual property rights (IPR) inthe country in order to strike a WTO deal with the U.S..

    "We're looking for a firm commitment from Russia to enforce IPR. They have done some of that. We would like to see a lot more," he said.

    The two sides agreed to continue the negotiation in following weeks and during the G8 summit period. But with the stalled Doha round of global trade talks forcing its way onto the agenda, it would be hard to squeeze extra time to further Russia's WTO entry talks.

    Russia is the largest country outside the 149-member trade club,and the United States is the last country left for Russia to gain support for its WTO membership application, a process that began in 1994.

    During their talks in St. Petersburg, Russian delegates complained that the U.S. delegation had set higher standards for them to meet than other countries. Enditem