U.N. Puts Cloning Talks On Hold

Assembly Senses Division, Elects To Delay Talks

(AP)  The deeply divided U.N. General Assembly agreed Tuesday to delay any discussion of a global treaty against cloning for one year — overturning the vote by its legal committee for a two-year delay.

The decision, reached without a vote, means the issue of banning human cloning will be included in the assembly's next session, which begins in September.

Diplomats said Costa Rica lobbied intensively for the General Assembly to vote on its proposed resolution calling for the drafting of a treaty that would ban all cloning, but agreed to the one-year delay when it realized it didn't have enough votes.

There is almost universal support among the 191 U.N. member states to ban the cloning of human beings.

But Costa Rica, the United States and about 50 other mainly developing countries want a ban on all forms of cloning that use human embryos — a position supported by the Roman Catholic Church.

Britain, Russia, China, Japan, Belgium, France and Germany support a ban on cloning babies, but want individual countries to decide whether to allow human cloning for research and medical experiments.

On Nov. 6, the assembly's legal committee voted 80-79 with 15 abstentions to delay consideration of a cloning treaty, a move requested by Islamic nations.

It was one of the closest votes in recent memory and reflected the highly charged debate on whether scientists should be able to use cloning techniques — known as therapeutic cloning — to find cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The decision climaxed months of contentious negotiations, which failed to produce a compromise text for a treaty.

The U.S.-Costa Rican camp wanted a committee to start drafting a treaty on a complete ban while the camp led by Britain, Russia and China wanted to start drafting a treaty only against reproductive cloning.

After the legal committee's vote, Costa Rica started lobbying to have the General Assembly vote on its resolution. Diplomats said the United States, surprisingly, did not lobby other countries to support such a resolution.

Costa Rica reintroduced its resolution, which would have called for the committee debating the cloning issue to meet for a week during the next General Assembly session and prepare a draft treaty totally banning cloning "as a matter of urgency."

The Costa Rican draft would have required all countries to "prohibit any research, experiment, development or application in their territories or areas under their jurisdiction or control of any technique aimed at human cloning" pending the adoption of an international convention.

This was clearly unacceptable to opponents of a total ban.

Diplomats said when Costa Rica realized it didn't have the votes, it sought consensus to raise the issue again next year and met with no objections.

Britain's deputy U.N. ambassador Adam Thomson said his government was "profoundly disappointed by the actions of those who sought until very recently to overturn the decision" of the legal committee and push for a vote on the resolution calling for a total ban.

Britain was one of the first countries to ban reproductive cloning, but Thomson said his country believes "all types of stem cell research including therapeutic cloning should be encouraged."

"Indeed, we believe that it would be indefensible to stop this research and deny millions of people and their families the chance of new treatments which could save their lives. The international scientific community supports this view," he said.

Stem cells can divide and turn into any kind of cell in the body -- raising the possibility of "growing" replacement organs for sick people.

The Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups say stem cell research is tantamount to murder because it starts with the destruction of a human embryo to recover the cells.

Scientists have successfully cloned sheep and other animals. Researchers linked to the Raelian movement, which believes life on Earth was created by clones of extraterrestrials, claim to have produced human babies by cloning, but they have not offered proof.