The Bush administration today urged quick UN action on a global treaty to ban all cloning of human embryos, including for medical research, but diplomats said the measure would go nowhere before the November 2 US elections.
With support for the US stance faltering in the General Assembly's treaty-writing Legal Committee, Washington hopes to avoid an embarrassing loss just days before the election, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Even if they had the votes to win at the United Nations, the emotional issue divides US voters and could harm President George W. Bush's re-election prospects, they said.
A proposal for a UN treaty banning human cloning has been bottled up in the United Nations since 2001, with the world body's 191 member-nations deeply divided on the issue.
All UN members essentially agree on a convention that would ban the cloning of human beings.
But a group of 63 nations, led by the United States and Costa Rica, want an expanded treaty that would ban both the cloning of humans and the cloning of human embryos for stem cell or similar research, known as "therapeutic cloning."
That has put Washington on a collision course with a rival group of countries, including close allies Britain, Japan, South Korea, India and Turkey, who are pushing for a treaty banning only the cloning of human beings.
That group would leave it to individual governments to decide whether to allow therapeutic cloning.