A divided United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a non-binding declaration banning all types of cloning, including those for therapeutic purposes.
While 84 states, including the US, voted for a ban, 34 member states, including India, opposed the document and said they would go ahead with the research.
Thirty-seven members of the 191-member assembly preferred to abstain from the voting, 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 of 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.
Many Muslim nations abstained from the voting, saying they were not voting either way because of lack of consensus.
US President George W Bush said he applauded 'the strong vote of the United Nations General Assembly urging countries to ban all forms of human cloning'.
"Human life must not be created for the purpose of destroying it," he said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
He expressed the hope that the US Congress will enact legislation to ban cloning in the country.