BEIJING - China confirmed its first three human bird flu cases Wednesday, including two fatalities, as Asia-Pacific leaders called for better co-operation to head off a potential pandemic before the winter flu season arrives.

A 12-year-old girl in central Hunan province and a 24-year-old female poultry worker in Anhui province in the east have both died of the virus, said Roy Wadia, a World Health Organization spokesman in Beijing.

China's official Xinhua news agency said the Health Ministry had confirmed two human cases of avian flu in Hunan and one in Anhui, but provided no additional details.

The third confirmed infection was the Hunan girl's nine-year-old brother, who has since recovered, Wadia said. Chinese and WHO experts had been reviewing the children's cases because of a bird flu outbreak among poultry in their village.

Chinese officials initially said the two children and a teacher who also fell ill in their village had tested negative for bird flu.

The announcement marks China's first human cases of the H5N1 virus that has killed at least 64 people in Asia since 2003.

A day earlier, China announced an ambitious plan to vaccinate its entire poultry stock - 14 billion fowl - against bird flu following 11 outbreaks in poultry over the last month. Details were not given.

Northeastern China's Liaoning province ordered all farm birds vaccinated early this month, said Fu Jingwu, deputy director of the provincial Animal Health Supervision and Management Bureau.

"All the poultry that's supposed to be vaccinated has been vaccinated - 320 million birds," Fu said.

The province has also destroyed more than 10 million chickens, ducks and other birds.

Meanwhile, government ministers at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Busan, South Korea, urged more regional and international information-sharing and response systems to combat the bird flu threat.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged governments to improve communications and to encourage the private sector to help prepare for outbreaks before they happen.

"New global pandemics, like avian influenza, require new, concerted action," she told APEC trade and foreign ministers. "We must increase the transparency of our political systems. We need to improve our ability to communicate accurate, relevant information quickly to the international community, and we must encourage our private sector to help us prepare for outbreaks before they happen."

Comment: That's a good onen Condi! Governments need to be more transparent!

In Indonesia, visiting European Union Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou warned that the country must intensify its bird flu fight and that the government must follow through with action.

He said the country has to devise and implement a detailed plan - from ways to monitor hundreds of millions of backyard chickens to guidelines for slaughtering and vaccinating them.

"It will not be an easy task," said Kyprianou. "Indonesia will need foreign assistance ... we can help but we can't do it for them."

Also Wednesday, Vietnamese authorities reported bird flu outbreaks in three more provinces - northern Vinh Phuc and Son La and central Quang Ngai - bringing to 12 the number of cities and provinces affected in the latest wave, which began about a month ago.

Vietnam is in middle of an aggressive campaign to cull all poultry in most of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The government is paying farmers about half the market value, and any birds found alive in the cities' main urban areas after Monday will be killed without compensation, authorities have said.

In Taiwan, officials on Wednesday expressed doubt about British tests that found the H5N1 virus in a group of finch-like birds imported from the island.

Taiwan's top animal health official, Watson Sung, said tests at the farm that supplied the birds had found no evidence of the virus. Taiwan will send a delegation to Britain to clear up the situation, Sung said.

Also Wednesday, Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, detailed plans to cope with a possible flu pandemic.

State political leader Premier Maurice Iemma said community halls and even sports fields would be pressed into action as places to isolate human flu victims, and hospitals would cancel non-urgent procedures.