Toronto, July 29 - Even as courts in Canada and the US Tuesday approved Ericsson's $1.13-billion bid last week to acquire the wireless business of Nortel, the 127-year-old Canadian corporate icon, political leaders here are putting pressure on the government to stop the sale.

Once a world leader in telecom equipment technology, Nortel is selling all its businesses to pay back its creditors after suffering $5-billion losses last year. Toronto-based Nortel has been operating under bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US since January.

It decided to sold itself off after posting further losses of $500 million this year.

Its next-generation wireless business went under the hammer last week, with Ericsson outbidding Nokia Siemens and American private equity firm MatlinPatterson.

Putting their stamp on the Ericsson deal Tuesday, judges in Toronto and Delaware said they were satisfied with the price that Nortel and its creditors got at the auction.

The judges also ruled out objections by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) that it was unfairly shut out of the bidding process.

After being shut out of bidding, the BlackBerry maker had urged the Canadian government to stop the auction in 'national interest.''

Called Long Term Evolution (LTE), Nortel's next-generation wireless technology will allow carriers to offer cell phones with advanced features such as online gaming and video streaming.

'For all of those reasons, I am very enthusiastically prepared to enter the sale order in this matter,'' American judge Kevin Gross said while putting his seal on the deal in conjunction with a Toronto court via a videolink.