OTTAWA -- U.S. authorities tagged with writing a mysterious study cataloguing Canadian terrorist targets say they never produced such a document and haven't been able to find out who did.

Beth Poisson, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy, said that department officials searched internally for the study yesterday and were unable to locate it.

"It's not the State Department, that we feel confident of," she said.

Reports earlier this week said that the State Department had prepared a list of 22 potential targets that Secretary of State Colin Powell was to have delivered to Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham when the two met Thursday.

The study created substantial interest in Canada, with some of the supposed sites even beefing up security.

However, Mr. Powell said on Thursday that he had no such list and the first he'd heard of it was in published reports that morning.

Ms. Poisson explained yesterday that before such a document becomes official it must pass through a "major clearance" process, which has not occurred.

She added that the department has asked other law enforcement agencies within the U.S. government to search for the document, but it has yet to be unearthed.

She conceded that it may exist somewhere else within the vast U.S. bureaucracy.

It may also may have been a draft or produced by a private security consulting firm.

According to a report by the Vancouver Province, the 48-page study was called Combined Analysis of Potential Foreign Strike Zones. It identified targets in Canada as well as in Britain, Germany, the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia and Israel. The newspaper said the report was on State Department stationery.

Ms. Poisson added that the reports of the study were counterproductive to Mr. Powell's call on Mr. Graham.

"We're upset because we feel it detracted from his visit . . . overshadowed it."

A Canadian security expert said yesterday that the document might have been leaked by a U.S. official in an effort to embarrass the Chrétien cabinet, which some believe has not done enough to protect Canadians from a potential strike.

"It has been immensely useful because it has grabbed us by the lapels," said David Harris, an Ottawa-based consultant, adding that Canadian officials undoubtedly have their own lists.

Another expert said he doubted the Americans would want to create a diplomatic incident by leaking the document on the eve of Mr. Powell's visit.

Wesley Wark, a specialist in security and intelligence issues at the University of Toronto, said the study was odd because it included obvious targets like the CN Tower and the Calgary Stampede, yet omitted certain other targets, such as some military bases and large synagogues.

"I think it's extremely unlikely that it's an official document," Mr. Wark said. It it might have been produced by a private consultant or perhaps come out of a Canadian-U.S. exercise in which each side was asked by the other to develop a list of what it considered vulnerable targets.

Mr. Wark said Ottawa should release information about potential targets so the issue can be debated and Canadians can judge whether their government is doing a good job.