国际英语新闻：Foreign compensations bill confirmed rejected in Iceland referendum

REYKJAVIK, March 7 (Xinhua) -- The final official results released on Sunday confirmed that the so-called Icesave bill was rejected by huge "no" votes of Icelanders in a national referendum held on Saturday.

A total of 144,231 ballots were counted across the country, and 93.2 percent of them were against the bill, which was designed to compensate British and Dutch banking customers for their losses after the Icelandic Internet bank Icesave collapsed in the fall of 2008, said Iceland's public broadcaster RUV on Sunday evening.

It also pointed out that only 1.8 percent of the voters agreed with the bill. Totally, there're about 230,000 registered voters in the country, but only 62.7 percent of them took part in the referendum.

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

The government said at midnight Saturday it would continue in the coming days with strenuous efforts to achieve a satisfactory solution to the Icesave issue.

Icelanders were in shock after the financial crash of the Icesave bank in 2008. The bank had offered high interest rates before it failed along with its parent, Landsbanki.

The government agreed under intense international pressure to pay for the minimum insurance. The whole amount is close to 60 percent of its GNP, said a report of the local online newspaper Iceland Review.