Telenor said Tuesday that a Russian court had turned down its request to delay the implementation of a ruling allowing a bailiff to seize Telenor's 29.9 percent stake in VimpelCom.
Telenor said the court may within days sell its VimpelCom shares after last month's ruling that it had delayed VimpelCom's entry into Ukraine and ordered it to pay the operator damages.
The dispute, which Norway has called the top bilateral issue between Oslo and Moscow, was discussed by the foreign ministers of the two countries on Tuesday.
After the talks, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow that it was hard for the government to influence the case since VimpelCom was a private company, while Telenor was controlled by the Norwegian state.
"It is hard for us to influence. We are unhappy with what is going on," Lavrov said. "We are counting on this situation being settled without any more significant losses to either side ... on a corporate level."
Telenor's spokesman, Dag Melgard, said, "The latest escalation showed that there are means in use that may require some involvement by the authorities."
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