In a direct rebuke to the French and German delegations at the United Nations, the European Parliament today overwhelmingly called for an international ban on all forms of human cloning. Voting 271 to 154, the Parliament endorsed an amendment to a biotechnology report in which it repeats its insistence that there should be a universal and specific ban at the level of the United Nations on the cloning of human beings at all stages of formation and development and urges the Commission and the
Member States to work towards this end.

France and Germany
This amendment reflects growing European disagreement with the French and German governments, which have been seeking a UN ban on the cloning of human beings for live-birth purposes, but not the cloning of human beings to be used and destroyed in medical experiments. According to Peter Liese, a member of the European Parliament from Germany, the parliament unambiguously voted in favor of a UN-wide ban on the cloning of human beings. Thus the members have affirmed the position they have held in the past, and in the UN debate stand side-by-side with Spain, Italy and the US, who, contrary to Germany [and France], want to ban not only so-called reproductive cloning but any form of cloning.

Hubert Hüppe, a Christian Democratic member of the German parliament, told the Friday Fax that, In the face of the European parliament decision, German and France, and perhaps the United Kingdom,
find themselves isolated at the European level, even though their main argument at the UN for this partial ban is that it enjoys near-universal support. The vote therefore illustrates that what they argued at the UN was not true, because the vast majority of the European parliament favors the opposite position.

Hüppe also doubts the motives of the German actions at the UN. "I believe that the German government is attempting to undermine Germany's long-standing legal protection for human embryos in order to strengthen our biotechnology industry. They are using an international convention at the United Nations as a back-door strategy to change our own national laws."

Aggressive Lobbying
The German delegation has engaged in aggressive lobbying at the UN. However, the number of nations favoring a complete ban has increased throughout the debate. In the face of this continuing disagreement, further debate was postponed until September of 2004.

According to Christian Much, German legal adviser to the UN, the German position remains firm. France and Germany are ready to engage in broad-based substantial negotiations, and we hope others are too, with a clear sense of urgency and with a non-dogmatic view on what is feasible in
the short term, and what is not, he said.

The United States will continue to press for a comprehensive ban, and now considers such a ban to be even more feasible than a partial ban. A US delegate told the General Assembly that We believe that the growing support for a total ban signals that a course correction is underway and that the trend toward a total ban will forge a clear path toward a convention to prohibit all cloning of human embryos.

Copyright ­ C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute).

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