OTTAWA (CP) - Lumber industry officials are disputing suggestions that the Liberals had the template for a softwood deal with the U.S. but backed away due to opposition from David Emerson.

They say preliminary talks were underway last fall, but those talks were far from full negotiations and fizzled out over proposal details that fell far short of industry demands.

That contradicts suggestions by some that Emerson - then-Liberal industry minister, now Tory trade minister - delayed a solution to the trade war that has chilled relations between Canada and the United States.

While some say the talks appeared promising, others are doubtful that a deal was close at hand to end the dispute that affects a $10-billion export industry.

The situation was far from approaching full-blown negotiations that might have solved the long-running and costly dispute, Carl Grenier of the Free Trade Lumber Council said Thursday.

And its early elements wouldn't likely have been acceptable to many in the hard-hit forestry sector, he added.

"It was only a proposal," with elements drawn from a previous proposal rejected by the forestry industry in December 2003, said Grenier, whose group represents lumber producers across the country.

"It was nixed by senior (forestry) industry people . . . I don't think it can be described as a done deal."

A published report this week suggested objections to the terms of the discussions were led by Emerson.

Emerson has said he spoke out against the proposals because they weren't good for the industry. However, he cancelled a telephone news conference that was scheduled for Thursday afternoon after he was reportedly caught in traffic.

Outraged Liberals and Tories alike have recently condemned Emerson for crossing the floor this week to join Stephen Harper's Conservative cabinet.

And eyebrows have been raised over Emerson's cabinet appointment shepherding the softwood file when his most recent private sector job was as chief executive officer at forestry giant Canfor Corp.

Still, Emerson's version of events is supported by some industry spokesmen, who say they knew talks were going on last year but were far from achieving a satisfactory softwood deal.

"Nobody told us there was a deal in the making," said Guy Chevrette, president of the Conseil de l'industrie forestiere du Quebec, a provincial forestry organization.

Nor did the Quebec government think a solution was in sight.

"We were not aware of any supposed deal," said an official in the office of Claude Bechard, the province's minister of economic development.

But discussions had become intense and optimism was growing that a deal could be close, said a source in Washington.

"I've never heard people so confident that they were on the brink and they certainly were informing stakeholders, although maybe not as widely as usual."

The talks couldn't have been very advanced as nothing official was put before Paul Martin's Liberal cabinet for discussion, said a former minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He did hear "rumblings around the margins" about a proposal but nothing ever came of it because, said the former minister: "it wasn't as good as we could do."

Talks in the past that seemed close to reaching a deal to end softwood have foundered because the federal government has insisted all softwood-producing provinces and industry players have to be satisfied.

That's been tough to achieve, given the diverse provinces and interests involved in the lumber industry.

Published reports said the failed proposal called for Washington to reimburse about 75 per cent of more than $5 billion in disputed tariffs that imposed on Canadian lumber in return for concessions.

Those may have included Ontario and Quebec export quotas.

Companies in British Columbia - the province that produces the most softwood exports - would have faced higher stumpage fees under the proposal to keep mills in the province's interior from flooding the U.S. market with cheap wood culled from forests hard-hit by mountain pine beetle infestations.