The Russian government wants to form a fourth national mobile telecoms operator by combining the different regional cellular operators that it controls, the country's communications minister said Tuesday.

The government is working on plans to restructure the country's state telecommunications holding, OAO Svyazinvest.

"The practical goal for Svyazinvest is to become one of the top four (mobile) operators on the market," Communications Minister Igor Shchegolev told businessmen in a speech on Tuesday.

Svyazinvest controls seven publicly-traded companies which operate the fixed-line infastructure in each of Russia's regions. These companies also run more profitable mobile networks and the government wants to strengthen these businesses, which serve around a tenth of Russia's mobile subscribers but are managed separately.

"The mobile sector is the biggest on the Russian market...and Svyazinvest is particularly weak in the sector," said Shchegolev.

The minister added that the merged mobile businesses of Svyazinvest could then be combined with one of Russia's three existing national operators OAO Mobile TeleSystems (MBT), OAO Vimpel Communications (VIP) or OAO Megafon.

But the minister said that Svyazinvest's executives were responsible for any discussions with the operators, and said he didn't know if they were interested in the idea.

Ministry Web site: www.minsvyaz.ru

-By Will Bland, Dow Jones Newswires; +7 495 937 8445; william.bland@dowjones.com