Her comments were in contrast to her statements on Tuesday, when she said there had to be agreement on "the pulp mill" to get the deal done.

Yesterday, Ms Giddings said an agreement could be reached, but a pulp mill needed to be part of it.

"There can be an agreement without those organisations agreeing to the pulp mill, they don't have to, they are not being asked to suddenly change their position opposing to this piece of industry, to suddenly support it, we don't expect they will," she said.

However, Ms Giddings said any further locking up of high-conservation-value forest would probably need some compromise from the environmental groups.

"Certainly for an agreement to be reached on putting any further freeze on to high-conservation- value reserve there has to be the pulp mill as part of it," she said.

"You won't get the trees without the industry."

Facilitator Bill Kelty flew out of the country yesterday and was not available to the media.

In a statement he said he would hand his interim report to the government by the end of the week.

"One area specifically (for consideration) would be an independent review of the current pulp mill assessment," he said.

"This would attempt to clarify the main areas of concern within the current assessment of the proposal from Gunns Ltd."

Ms Giddings said if an independent assessment of the project was what the round-table talks came up with, then the government would support it.

Mr Kelty's office confirmed he was not being paid to facilitate the peace talks, and had even refused to be reimbursed for some expenses.

Greens leader Nick McKim said he had been reassured there were no ultimatums from Mr Kelty to environmental groups about the pulp mill.