Posted on 8-11-2002

No-clone Treaty Derailed
By Irwin Arieff, Tue Nov 5, 7:08 PM ET

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States has derailed for at least a
year a Franco-German proposal for a global ban on human cloning that the
U.S. anti-abortion movement rejects as too narrow, U.N. diplomats said
on Tuesday.

A U.S. official called the delay a major victory for Washington at the
United Nations (news - web sites), saying, "We very strongly feel that no
decision is better than a bad decision." French and German diplomats
portrayed the latest maneuvering as only a temporary setback in their
campaign for international approval of an agreement outlawing the cloning
of human beings.

At issue is whether the treaty should ban solely the cloning of humans, as
called for by Paris and Berlin, or whether it should also ban so-called
"therapeutic" or "experimental" cloning, in which human embryos are cloned
for medical research. Scientists have strongly opposed such restrictions on
their activities as a matter of principle, arguing that research like
stem-cell studies could save human lives.

France and Germany initially claimed support for their approach from the
vast majority of the United Nations' 191 member-states. But at the urging
of the U.S. anti-abortion movement, Washington began pushing hard earlier
this year for a treaty that would ban both types of cloning.

U.S. officials recently claimed support for their rival initiative from
more than 30 other countries, led by heavily Catholic Spain and the
Philippines.

VOTE ABANDONED AT LAST MINUTE

The two opposing factions then put forward rival draft resolutions,
intended to provide guidance to the treaty drafters on how to proceed. The
General Assembly's Legal Committee, the panel in charge of the drafting
process, had been expected to vote by Thursday, at the latest, on the
dueling approaches. But at the last minute, envoys from France, Germany,
the United States, Spain and the Philippines agreed to end their dispute
and to instead put off the drafting for a year. A U.S. official said Paris
and Berlin had agreed to the year-long delay after concluding their plan
would be defeated in the Legal Committee. But German envoy Christian Much
dismissed that statement as "psychological warfare. "We would win the vote
but the divisions within the committee would not provide a sound basis for
going forward," Much told Reuters. "This does not mean the United Nations
is condoning cloning or closing its eyes on the matter," he said. "We will
spend the time looking for ways to move forward."

Diplomats backing the Franco-German approach have argued the U.S. stance
could doom the project before it even got off the ground. They said their
own approach could have produced a draft treaty, ready for ratification by
early 2004.

U.S. anti-abortion activists said delays did not bother them. To go forward
with the Franco-German plan would mean allowing the destruction of human
embryos, which they saw as murder. "We are concerned about research that
deliberately and knowingly ends up killing a human being," said Wendy
Wright of Concerned Women for America, a nonprofit public policy group that
favors the U.S. approach.

The General Assembly first voted to draft a treaty last year, after Italian
fertility specialist Severino Antinori announced his intention to become
the first scientist to clone a human being. Numerous researchers have since
claimed progress in research into the mechanics of cloning a variety of
animals as well as humans, their organs and cells. But none so far has
boasted of fashioning human clones in a laboratory.