The G20 summit in Seoul, South Korea, has wrapped up with leaders failing to reach an agreement on dealing with differences in trade and currency policies that some fear could hurt the global economic recovery.

The summit also exposed the philosophical gap between China and the U.S. -- the two largest economies -- on the issues of currency and trade.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged that the summit was not as successful as it needed to be, with leaders failing to reach a concrete deal on currency exchange rates or on trade imbalances between nations.

"I think it's fair to say we did not resolve those issues here," Harper told reporters in Seoul.

But he said G20 leaders agreed that more attention should be paid to trade and currency issues.

"We have got a process for continued engagement. We've got a timeline around that," Harper said. "These are not going to be easy issues to resolve. But I think we've got everyone talking the same language."

G20 leaders released a joint statement following the meeting, but U.S. President Barack Obama admitted their accomplishments were modest at best.

"Instead of hitting home runs sometimes we're gonna hit singles, but they're really important singles," Obama told a news conference.

The U.S. has accused China of keeping its currency down to maintain an export advantage. Canada has backed Washington's position on the issue with Harper saying that China must let the value of its currency fluctuate.

Obama called China's currency policy an "irritant" for the U.S. as well as many other countries it trades with.

"China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued so what we have said is it is important for China in a gradual fashion to transition to a market based system," he said.

But China and other countries have pointed fingers at Washington's recent move to inject $600 billion into its monetary system, which has effectively devalued the U.S. greenback.

Summit reaction

Former prime minister Paul Martin, who encouraged the creation of the G20 while he was in public office, called the summit a success because the leaders made progress in areas such as reforming the International Monetary Fund and banking regulations.

"These global imbalances obviously weren't dealt with, but they weren't going to be," he told CTV's Power Play. "The fundamental differences between the United States' economy and the Chinese economy, or indeed between the German economy and the rest of Europe, are so deep that they're not going to turn that around overnight."

"I think they've done the right thing -- they've set up a working committee and they've turned it over to the IMF to basically be able to assess individual countries. That's what they had to do."

However, some analysts were less than optimistic about the outcome of the meeting.

"Leaders are putting the best face on matters by suggesting that it is the process that matters rather than results," said Stephen Lewis, the chief economist with Monument Securities.

"The only concrete agreement seems to be that they should go on measuring the size of the problem rather than doing something about it."

CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife said the G20 countries have now put the key issues to a committee to work towards a resolution in time for the next G20 conference.

"What's happened here is that they've basically agreed to paper over their differences," Fife told CTV News Channel from Seoul on Friday.

Canada and India will co-chair this committee, which will give each nation the opportunity to bend the ear of the two main opponents in the trade and currency dispute.

"Canada has close ties the United States and the Indians, as an emerging nation, would be able to have some influence with the Chinese," Fife said.

Free-trade focus

Also in Seoul, Canada and India announced that they would begin talks that could lead to a free-trade agreement between the two countries.

Canada and India have been discussing the possibility of a free-trade agreement for several years. Two months ago, the two nations released a study showing that such an agreement would be beneficial for both sides.

After the conclusion of talks in Seoul, Harper headed to Japan where he'll spend the weekend meeting with his Asia counterparts at the two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Yokohama.

While the official APEC agenda picks up where the G20 left off, Harper is expected to focus on bilateral meetings aimed at securing Canada a place in the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade talks.

Before leaving South Korea for Japan, Harper said he also intends to seek help in curbing human smuggling.

"We obviously want to make sure we are part of a global solution, a regional solution, that we don't allow further spillover of this problem into our country," Harper said.

With files from The Associated Press and The Canadian Press