COUNCIL OF EUROPE AGREES TO BAN HUMAN CLONING

October 11, 1997

STRASBOURG, France (Reuter) -- Leaders of 40 nations encompassing all of Europe ended their largest-ever summit Saturday with pledges to make the continent freer and fairer as it heads into the 21st century.

Among the meeting's main agreements was a pledge to ban any method of human cloning that would attempt to create "a human being identical to another human being, whether living or dead."

A draft of the final declaration urged member countries to work to "undertake to prohibit all use of cloning techniques aimed at creating genetically identical human beings."

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl told delegates Friday that the issue of human cloning was "the greatest moral challenge in Europe.''

"Particularly because we Germans have to look back to a dark page in our history ... Germans take this extremely seriously,'' the chancellor said, referring to Nazi medical experiments during World War II.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain also addressed the issue, calling it one of the world's new challenges.

Leaders cited the perservation of fundamental human dignity as the reason for the clause on human cloning.