PARIS, Aug 10, 2001 -- (dpa) France and Germany on Thursday called for the United Nations to take "urgent action" in adopting more binding rules to ban human cloning than those currently addressed in a 1998 declaration.
The two countries sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan requesting the issue be put in the assembly's agenda of discussion when it opens its 56th annual session on September 11.
Under the UN's 1998 Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, reproductive cloning of human beings is not "permitted" because the practice is "contrary to human dignity".
But declarations are non-binding, and France and Germany want a full-fledged international convention on the issue. They called for negotiations in the General Assembly for "an international instrument banning the reproductive cloning of human beings".
They asked the assembly's legal committee, known as the 6th committee, to set up a special committee to draw up the negotiating mandate and to steer the negotiations towards an international convention. They hope negotiations could begin by 2003.
The request came in a week of debate about cloning in Washington, D.C., where three scientists announced their intention to carry on with experiments to clone human beings.
In a lively debate at the National Academy of Sciences, two doctors and a representative from a well-financed alleged cult, said they were going forward with their own human cloning programs.
They were countered by scientists who cited research on other species that has produced large numbers of birth defects in the cloned individual.
The U.S. House of Representatives has also voted to ban the procedure outright, but the Senate has yet to vote on the issue.
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