UN may vote on cloning this week

The United Nations (UN) is expected to revisit the thorny issue of human cloning again this week, but it doesn't appear that a consensus position is any nearer to being reached. Diplomats say that no compromise position has been found and it may be that the UN doesn't vote on the competing proposals as it is scheduled to do on Friday, but will instead put the vote off again.

Talks at the UN do not seem to have softened confrontation between member states over a US and Costa Rica-led proposal that would result in an international treaty banning all forms of human cloning, including cloning for medical research purposes (sometimes called therapeutic cloning). While all 191 UN members agree on a treaty first proposed in 2001, which would ban only reproductive cloning, member states are divided over the competing proposal, which seeks to prohibit all uses of cloning technology. In December 2003, the UN's General Assembly agreed to postpone a vote on the two proposals for a year. But, when the vote came round last month, the UN again failed to reach an agreement on how human cloning should be internationally regulated. Korea then proposed a further year's delay, saying that an international scientific conference should be held, and a study made of national laws and regulations governing cloning. Any decision on this matter was then postponed until at least after the US elections on 2 November 2004. Had John Kerry won the election, the US position on cloning for research purposes, including stem cell research, would have changed drastically.

Now, it appears that three weeks of negotiations have not led to a compromise between the Belgium-led group of countries supporting the ban on reproductive cloning only and the US/Costa Rica-led group. Since last year, several coalitions of countries have said they are opposed to a vote if the committee remain divided. They suggest that either the panel finds a compromise acceptable to all, or rejects the US/Costa Rica proposal in favour of another delay. Some say that the UN should adopt a statement of principle, rather than prohibiting research cloning outright, and allow countries to make up their own minds about the issue. In the absence of a compromise being reached, a vote on the two proposals has now been scheduled for 19 November. One diplomat commented 'the negotiations are continuing, but a lot of people seem resigned to a vote'. They added that 'it seems there is no possibility of reaching an agreement'.