French President Jacques Chirac is calling for an international ban on some types of human genetic engineering as officials of 19 European states gather in Paris to sign an agreement outlawing human cloning.

The ceremony is taking place in Paris, but some of Europe's most influential countries, including Germany and Britain, will not be signing.

This is because they are still studying a much larger Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, which will incorporate the cloning ban.

President Chirac told a conference of Europe's national ethics committees: "Nothing will be resolved by banning certain practices in one country if scientists and doctors can simply work on them elsewhere.

"It is only at the international level that we will be able to prohibit cloning and genetic manipulation that could alter the characteristics of the human race."

President Bill Clinton called for a five-year ban on human cloning experiments

United States President Bill Clinton called for a five-year ban on human cloning experiments after Richard Seed, a Harvard University educated physicist, said he was ready to set up a clinic to clone human babies.

Mr Seed predicted that as many as 200,000 human clones a year would be produced once his process was perfected.

Richard Seed disagrees with President Clinton

He boasted that he could produce a human clone within 18 months.

Researchers in Scotland ignited the debate last March with the announcement that they had cloned a sheep, which they named Dolly.

Nineteen of the 40 member states of the Council of Europe were represented at a ceremony starting at 1800 GMT at the French Foreign Ministry.

The accord prohibits "any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead".

It rules out any exception to the ban, even in the case of a completely sterile couple.

Dolly sparked the debate

The text, which is to become a part of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, would allow the cloning of cells for research purposes.

The agreement will become binding on the signatories as soon as it has been ratified in five states.

Signatories were expected to be Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey, according to the council.

Britain, which is not signing the accord on Monday, has been at the forefront of the cloning debate since the Scottish scientists' work on Dolly the sheep.

Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper reported that experiments in human cloning could begin in the United Kingdom as early as next year.
 

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