A global ban on all medical applications of human cloning was averted by an eleventh-hour deal at the United Nations on Tuesday. Last-minute haggling in the aisles of the UN General Assembly in New York sealed a compromise which postpones debate on a cloning treaty until October 2004. A total ban, backed by the US, the Vatican and other Catholic countries, would have caused a deep rift with nations such as the UK and the Netherlands that want the right to pursue new medical treatments from cloning. All countries want a UN treaty that will ban the creation of cloned human babies. But a US-backed proposal put forward by Costa Rica sought to extend the ban to "therapeutic" cloning. This aims to use stem cells from cloned embryos to treat diseases such as Parkinson's disease, but requires the embryo to be destroyed. The issue appeared to reach a stalemate in November when the UN's legal committee voted by 80 to 79 to postpone further debate on the treaty until 2005. But Costa Rica rekindled the crisis this week by proposing a vote in the General Assembly. This aimed to overturn the legal committee's decision and then put the original proposal for a total ban to a direct vote. In the end, both sides backed down as neither was confident enough of winning. But the last-minute deal did bring forward the resumption of the debate by a year. Source: New Scientist.