RENO, Nev. (AP) - A lawyer for environmentalists and tribal activists told a federal judge Monday that the government's approval of a big gold mine was flawed and would prohibit the Western Shoshone from practicing religious rites on a mountain in northern Nevada.

But attorneys for Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. countered that not all Western Shoshone share the views of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone Defense Project, and that their arguments are without merit.

U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks, after a two-hour hearing, delayed ruling on a motion by tribal activists for a temporary restraining order to halt work on the 6,700-acre Cortez Hills Project that would include a 900-acre open mine pit 2,000-feet deep.

Instead he urged lawyers for the Western Shoshone and Barrick to reach agreement on what work can proceed without causing extensive environmental harm until another hearing on an injunction request is held.

"The pit itself is the big issue here, frankly," Hicks said.

"If you are unable to resolve a proposed stipulation in the next two or three days, I will get you a decision on the TRO within a day," he told lawyers.

Roger Flynn, attorney for the Western Shoshone Defense Project, South Fork Band Council, Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and Great Basin Resource Watch, said his clients don't object to the entire project, just those aspects that would deface Mount Tenabo, a mountain about 250 miles east of Reno that is held sacred by some Shoshone members.

He argued the project will cause "irreparable harm," to sacred sites and water sources on the mountain.

Barrick lawyer Francis Wikstrom said Mount Tenabo has been mined for more than a century. He showed satellite photos depicting crisscrossing roads and cleared forests in the remote area.

In arguing against a temporary restraining order, he said the company is hurrying to get preliminary site work done before winter. He challenged the plaintiff's claims that the mountain is sacred.

"We're basically working in areas that have been extensively disturbed under previous permits," Wikstrom said.

Wikstrom said halting work, even temporarily, would cause economic harm not only to Barrick but to workers and subcontractors, including Western Shoshone.

Barrick also argued that the plaintiffs don't speak for all Western Shoshone.

"They speak only for themselves - two activist groups, a band council of unidentified individuals and a tribe situated hundreds of miles away in California," lawyers said in court documents.

"This is just the latest skirmish in the long battle over land rights in Nevada waged by a small group of Western Shoshone activists," the court filing said.

"The primary issue in this dispute - ownership of most of Nevada - was resolved many years ago when the United State Supreme Court decided that the Western Shoshone had lost title to their aboriginal lands. But Carrie Dann and her activist organizations and supporters refuse to accept the Supreme Court ruling."

The Dann family has fought with the federal government for decades over public land management, mostly involving grazing issues.

In 2003, the BLM seized hundreds of horses from Dann and her sister, Mary, who died in 2005.

The roundup and removal of more than 500 horses came after the BLM said the sisters grazed the animals illegally for decades, to the detriment of the range and other ranchers who have permits to graze livestock in the region.

That roundup followed one a few months earlier, where the federal agency seized and sold 227 cattle belonging to the elderly grandmothers.

Throughout their legal battles, the Danns and some other tribal leaders have argued that the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley gave the tribe title to up to 93,750 square miles of ancestral lands sprawled across what is now part of Nevada, Utah, Idaho and California.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

AP-NY-12-01-08 2032EST