Lumber Group: Japanese Are ‘Stonewalling’ : Trade: An American industry group says there’s no real progress in talks aimed at averting U.S. sanctions for alleged unfair practices.

The president of the National Forest Products Assn., a U.S. trade group, has accused Japan of “stonewalling” in negotiations aimed at averting U.S. retaliation against Japan for allegedly unfair trade practices involving forest products.

“Real progress in these negotiations could increase American sales to Japan by $2 billion a year,” Barry M. Cullen said at a news conference here Wednesday. “We are not even close to that right now in these negotiations.”

He said last year’s sales to the Japanese, mostly logs, amounted to $2.8 billion.

The forestry talks opened on the heels of the settlement of disputes over supercomputers and satellites, and U.S. officials had hoped that they would wipe the slate clean, at least for the moment, of unfair trade complaints involving threats of retaliation against Japan.

But a U.S. government negotiator, who asked not to be identified by name, said it is “very, very unlikely” that negotiators will reach agreement in the present round of talks on forest products.

“There has been no movement toward what we want,” the negotiator said.

If no agreement is reached by June 16, President Bush is empowered to impose retaliatory sanctions against Japan. The current round of talks is expected to continue today for a fifth day of talks that originally were scheduled to end Tuesday.

Cullen said U.S. forestry products firms are seeking “progress from the standpoint of an entire package” that deals with “tariffs, building codes, product standards, certification and classification procedures, subsidies and other structural issues such as housing and land-use policies.”

He said “to date, all of the discussion has focused on building codes and product standards, and that discussion has been very, very disappointing to us. We want to see substantial progress, (not) stonewalling.”

Cullen and other representatives of the U.S. forest products industry dismissed as out of date Japanese fears that construction of three- and four-story wooden buildings, including apartment houses, could put people in danger from fires and earthquakes.

Japan, which limits the height of wooden buildings to two stories, has offered to permit construction of three-story buildings in resort areas and uncrowded sections of small towns but not in urban areas, where demand for lumber would be the greatest.

Ronald R. Walker, another official of the National Forest Products Assn., said Japanese negotiators had argued against accepting American building standards by saying that Japanese earthquakes are unique because of their severity.

“Yet the strongest earthquakes that have occurred to date have been in other countries,” Walker said.