United Nations: The Bush Administration has asked the United Nations to take quick action to ban all forms of human cloning, including for medical research, as the world body's legal committee debated the highly divisive and emotional issue.

Washington and other supporters of the total ban argue that allowing cloning for therapeutic research would lead to exploitation of poor women for sale of embryos.

The committee on which all 191 members are represented will make recommendation to the General Assembly on the action to be taken on two resolutions before it, one which calls for banning all types of human cloning and the other calls for a ban on reproductive cloning to produce babies but would allow member States to decide on the therapeutic cloning.

Almost all member States agree that reproductive cloning should be banned, but on the issue of therapeutic cloning the General Assembly is split almost evenly.

Diplomats participating in the negotiations do not expect the resolution coming to vote before the US Presidential elections on November 2 in which it is a very emotive issue.

With emotions on both sides running high, diplomats say they do not expect Washington to press for vote before elections as either way it would not go well with sections of the voters and adversely affect President George W Bush's re-election campaign.

A proposal for drafting a UN treaty banning human cloning is before the world body since 2001 but divisions have made it impossible to reach any consensus. Last year, by just one vote 80-79, the committee decided to defer the drafting of the treaty as, it found, no consensus existed on the aims.

Costa Rica is leading a group of 63 countries, including the United States, to demand a ban on all types of human cloning, but India is joined by Japan, Britain, South Korea and dozens of other nations in calling for banning only reproductive cloning and leaving the decision on therapeutic cloning to individual stats.

Costa Rica's Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar introduced a draft resolution to ban all types of cloning, saying his country could not accept the deliberate creation of human embryos for the explicit purpose of destroying them for scientific experiments as is done in therapeutic cloning.

He also rejected any attempt to create "copies" of other human beings, saying both are an affront on human dignity.

Belgium introduced a parallel draft that calls for a convention to prohibit reproductive cloning of human beings while leaving the question of therapeutic cloning open. It would be upto States to decide whether to ban therapeutic cloning, call for a moratorium on it or regulate it nationally, the country's representative said.

Because of lack of consensus, a large section of delegates is expressing their opposition to schedule a new vote this year in view of its highly divisive nature. Among them is 56-member Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC).

Whatever the committee decide would go to the General Assembly which must put its seal before it becomes official.