Quito - Ecuador opted Friday to make use of a 30-day technical moratorium for payment of 30.6 million dollars of interest on its foreign debt that were due Saturday, Economy Minister Maria Elsa Viteri said.

During the moratorium, Ecuador is set to evaluate a report on potential irregularity in some portions of the country's sales of bonds, the minister said.

"There is no lack of financial resources," Viteri said.

Quito - The new Ecuadorian constitution, promoted by leftist President Rafael Correa, was approved by 64 per cent of votes cast, election authorities TSE said Monday after counting out roughly 80 per cent of the votes.

According to the figures, around 28 per cent of the 10 million voters had rejected the constitution with the remaining ballot papers being empty or invalid.

For Correa, the outcome marks the biggest success since his election in 2006.

He declared a "landslide" for the "yes" vote after the first projections Sunday night. The constitutional draft was his most important election promise in the 2006 election.

Buenos Aires/Quito - Ecuador's new constitution, approved in a referendum on Sunday, dwarfs its international counterparts by its 444 articles and ambitious goals.

Social justice, cultural diversity, equal rights, environmentalism, strengthening the president's role and more citizen participation, are all enshrined in the new constitution.

As are the protection of national sovereignty, free health care and education, transparent and efficient government and even the right to "Sumak Kawsay," which in the indiginous Quechua language means the "good life," are listed.

Buenos Aires/Quito - The draft and approval of a new constitution with socialist underpinnings is progressing peacefully in Ecuador, in sharp contrast to similar reforms that have taken Bolivia close to a civil war in recent weeks.

Ecuadorians are to vote Sunday in a referendum on the constitution proposed by President Rafael Correa, and according to opinion polls some 55 per cent of the voters will favour the new text, with 444 articles.

However, just as in Bolivia, the conservative and the relatively wealthy in the impoverished northern Andean country are unhappy about Ecuador's apparent swing to the left and about the withdrawal of pure capitalist precepts.

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