SEOUL, South Korea - A bank that will create and supply new lines of embryonic stem cells for research opened today in Seoul as part of a global partnership that will help scientists in countries such as the United States get around government restrictions on cloning.

Led by South Korean cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk, the Korean-led consortium will serve as the main center for providing embryonic stem cells, a potential source of replacement tissue for people with a variety of ailments.

The World Stem Cell Hub hopes to create about 100 cell lines per year with genetic defects that cause such diseases as diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, AIDS, Lou Gehrig's, and sickle cell anemia, according to experts familiar with the project. Researchers around the world would then study how these cells develop into diseased tissues.

The Seoul-based stem cell bank - which will have its first branches in Britain and the United States - is expected to provide other scientists room to circumvent government restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.

Many scientists are hoping to accelerate research on the master cells that can be grown into all the other tissues in the body. However, culling stem cells often involves destroying days-old embryos and President Bush's administration bans federal funding for research on all but a handful of old embryonic stem-cell lines, developed before Bush outlined his qualms in August 2001.

Instead of using embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization, the Koreans create them from cloned skin cells. That process is favored by some scientists because cloning can create a perfect tissue match for sick patients. But critics say it condones creating human life for laboratory research.

Hwang said the partnership will accelerate efforts to find treatments for incurable diseases.

"When the use of these stem cells is limited to a particular country, it takes much too long to create technologies usable for the whole of humanity," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "By creating a global network, we plan to share stem cells created in each country and share information on those stem cells."

Hwang has received world recognition for cloning the world's first human embryos and extracting stem cells. In May, he announced he had created the world's first embryonic stem cells that genetically match injured or sick patients - a major step in the quest to grow patients' own replacement tissue to treat diseases.

More than 125 stem cell lines have been reported around the world, taken mostly from donated embryos.

"We congratulate Korea ... for constructing the World Stem Cell Hub as a global lighthouse, safely and responsibly guiding us away from treacherous rocks," Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said at the opening ceremony.

"We now have hope that human beings' sufferings might someday be alleviated," said Schatten, who works closely with South Korea's Hwang.

South Korea bans cloning for reproductive reasons but provides full support for scientists doing it for medical research.