Italy offers compromise on cloning

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ Italy has offered a compromise on human cloning that seeks common ground among U.N. member states who are sharply divided over competing treaties to ban the practice, diplomats said.
It was too early to say whether the compromise will help settle the dispute before Friday, when the U.N. General Assembly's legal committee had planned to vote on the two offers if the sides couldn't agree on one text, Belgian diplomat Marc Pecsteen said.

"We're making progress," Pecsteen told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "We need some more playing with words to find the compromise we need, and I don't know if we'll have the time to get to that."

The issue of a global treaty on human cloning has exposed a stark rift in member states' attitudes. A proposal from Costa Rica would ban all human cloning, while the other, from Belgium, would ban reproductive cloning but allow countries to use embryos for stem cell and other research.

The Costa Rican document has 62 co-sponsors including the United States and Italy, while the Belgian offer is...