PARIS, Jan 3: Brigitte Boisselier, the French chemist and official of the Canada-based Raelian sect, says that a second cloned baby is to be born “in the next few days” in Europe. She made the announcement last night in Brussels during a live interview with French public TV channel France-2.

Only last week, Ms Boissellier, the president of Clonaid, a private company whose principal stock-in-trade is the cloning of human beings, had announced from Miami the birth of the world’s first cloned baby in the United States.

Pressed during last night’s newscast by anchorman David Pujadas as to when the US-born baby would be presented to the press and proof of his cloned origins made public, she said “in the next few days.”

She used the same words to make the announcement of the birth of Europe’s first cloned baby, implying that he would be born in Belgium.

With regard to the US-born child, she told Pujadas that it was because of legal complications involving the child’s two parents that she’d been forced to postpone providing promised independent proof of his cloned origins.