India on Tuesday joined 34 member states in opposing the document, strongly backed by the Bush administration, with 84 states voting for it. As many as 37 members of the 191-member assembly preferred to absent themselves during the vote, which pitted some of the staunchest American allies, including Britain, against the United States.

The adoption of declaration, which gives symbolic victory to the US, brings to conclusion four-years efforts to negotiate an international treaty putting a mandatory ban on reproductive cloning.

However, nations supporting therapeutic cloning, said the world body has lost a major chance to explicitly ban cloning for producing babies.

The declaration, which has no force in law, urges member states, among other things, to "prohibit all forms of human cloning in as much as they are incompatible with human dignity".

Several Arab and Latin American countries joined the US in voting for the declaration but Asians and Europeans mostly opposed it. Among the abstentions were many Muslim nations, who said they were not voting either way because of lack of consensus.

Indian delegate M Gandhi, legal adviser at the Indian Mission to the United Nations, asserted that New Delhi's position on therapeutic cloning remains unchanged as the declaration was non-binding and does not reflect agreement among the wider membership of the Assembly.

Explaining India's position, he said New Delhi remains totally opposed to reproductive cloning owing to the doubtful nature of its safety, success, utility and ethnical acceptability.

However, it considers therapeutic cloning on case-by-case basis within the guidelines laid down with the approval of National Bioethical Committee.