Wednesday, March 9 2005 11:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

United Nations: A divided UN General Assembly has adopted a non-binding declaration banning all types of cloning, including for therapeutic purposes, but those who opposed it, including India, said they would go ahead with the research.

India joined 34 member States yesterday (Mar 8m 2005) in opposing the document, strongly backed by the Bush administration, with 84 States voting for it. As many as 37 members of the 191-member assembly abstained during the vote, which pitted some of the staunchest American allies, including Britain, against the United States.

The adoption of declaration, which gives symbolic victory to the US, bring to conclusion four-years efforts to negotiate an international treaty putting a mandatory ban on reproductive cloning.

However, nations supporting therapeutic cloning said that the world body has lost a major chance to explicitly ban cloning for producing babies.

The declaration, which has no force in law, urges member States, among other things, to "prohibit all forms of human cloning in as much as they are incompatible with human dignity".

Several Arab and Latin American countries joined the US in voting for the declaration but Asians and Europeans mostly opposed it. Among the abstentions were many Muslim nations who said they were not voting either way because of lack of consensus.