La Paz  - Former world top scorer Joaquin Botero was the hat- trick hero for Bolivia as they stunned Argentina 6-1 Wednesday in the South American World Cup qualifiers.

"Bolivia was better than us and gave us a thrashing that would have seemed impossible if we had thought about it before the game," Argentina coach Diego Maradona said. "They did well to beat us, and we have to start again. Bolivia has been better than us in every corner of the pitch."

La Paz  - Argentina coach Diego Maradona admitted Wednesday that his men were overpowered in every aspect of the game they lost 6-1 to Bolivia in La Paz, in a phenomenon that he described as "inexplicable."

"The whole of Bolivia played very well," he admitted. "They played good football."

As for his own men, Maradona was critical and said they did nothing of what they had planned ahead of the match.

"Argentina surprised me. I was surprised by the fact that they created so many chances," he said.

La Paz  - Former world top scorer Joaquin Botero was the hat- trick hero f

La Paz  - Bolivia's new constitution passed with 61.4 per cent of the votes in favour, according to the final official count of referendum ballots released by the country's electoral authorities on Monday.

The measure received 2.06 million votes, with close to 1.3 million votes (38.6 per cent of the total) against the proposed text.

The abstention rate was 9.74 per cent, the lowest in Bolivia in the past 25 years.

Buenos Aires/La Paz  - Broad support for a new constitution signalled another impressive victory for Bolivia's left-wing populist President Evo Morales, who was celebrating even before the official results were in.

The new text was approved by 60 per cent of voters in a referendum Sunday, according to exit polls made public by Bolivian media.

The president celebrated the unofficial victory and hailed it as a "new founding" of the poor Andean country, with equal opportunities for all citizens.

La Paz  - Eleven people died in southwestern Bolivia while they slept at a rural lodge that was also being used as a pesticide deposit, police said Tuesday in the Bolivian province of Chuquisaca.

The dead - including one boy and three women - were peasants from the Japo K'asa, some 720 kilometres southwest of La Paz, who had opted to sleep there en route to Sucre. They were carrying agricultural produce from the Nor Cinti valley to market.

The lodge held bottles of chemicals that are used as pesticides.