UNITED NATIONS, Nov 19: A US-led campaign to ban cloning of human embryos, including for stem cell research, crumbled on Friday as a divided United Nations prepared to abandon the initiative.

"The bottom line is that stem cell research will advance. This declaration will not chill stem cell research," said Bernard Siegel, a Florida attorney who led a lobbying drive by scientists and patient advocacy groups to defend cloning for therapeutic ends.

In an agreement reached late on Thursday, backers and foes of the three-year drive by the Bush administration agreed to ask the UN General Assembly's treaty-writing legal committee to drop its consideration of a treaty on the issue.

Opponents of the US plan said the agreement showed that a majority of the 191 UN member-nations wanted to keep the door open to therapeutic cloning, in which human embryos are cloned as part of research such as stem cell studies.

But Ambassador Bruno Stagno Ugarte of Costa Rica, who led nations supporting Washington's plan, said it would have won in a straight up-or-down vote but instead faced death through procedural challenges, as happened twice before in the panel.

"We are concentrating on what we perceive to offer the best chance for prompt UN action on an urgent and important issue," he said. Friday's committee action fell a little over two weeks after US elections in which stem cell research was an issue.

Opinion polls showed strong support for such studies, and the US Congress has so far shunned President Bush's pleas for a tough law that bans therapeutic cloning. -Reuters