国际英语新闻：Icelanders reject foreign compensations bill in referendum

REYKJAVIK, March 7 (Xinhua) -- Iceland rejected the Icesave bill with 93.3 percent of "no" votes in the national referendum held on Saturday, according to partial official results released on Sunday.

A voter casts his ballot on a referendum in Reykjavik March 6, 2010. Icelanders vote today in a referendum on a 5 billion U.S. dollars deal to repay Anglo-Dutch loans, with an expected resounding "No" set to further delay foreign aid and hopes for economic recovery

After 91,699 ballots were counted, 93.3 percent of them were against the bill, which deals with compensating British and Dutch banking customers for their losses when an Icelandic bank collapsed in 2008, said Iceland's public broadcaster RUV.

It also pointed out that only 1.5 percent of voters agreed with the bill. Totally, there're about 230,000 eligible voters in the country.

An election official holds a ballot paper for a referendum in Reykjavik March 6, 2010

Both Iceland's Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir and Minister of Finance Steingrimur Sigfusson didn't take part in the referendum. They said they would support the law which they fought for before.