Poland reported its first outbreak of the disease, saying Monday that laboratory tests confirmed that two wild swans had died of the lethal strain.

Dr. Margaret Chan, who is spearheading WHO's efforts against bird flu, told disease experts meeting in Geneva to discuss bird flu preparations that the organization's top priority was to keep the deadly strain from mutating into a form easily passed between humans. That could trigger a global pandemic.

Since February, the virus has spread to birds in 17 new countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, she said.

"We truly feel that this present threat and any other threat like it is likely to stretch our global systems to the point of collapse," said Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO's director of epidemic and pandemic alert and response.

WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said experts hope to isolate outbreaks and establish agreements allowing international health authorities to respond quickly, testing viruses and putting in place measures to contain the disease.

In Austria, all the cats from the affected shelter have been moved to a location where they will remain under observation. The shelter has been closed, Health Minister Maria Rauch-Kallat told reporters in Vienna.

"We have decided to put all the cats in quarantine," Rauch-Kallat said. "Here they will be observed by veterinarians and experts in the coming days and weeks."

German authorities last month confirmed that a cat on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen had succumbed to the deadly virus, which it is believed to have caught by eating an infected bird.

That would be consistent with a pattern of disease transmission seen in wild cats in Asia.

German officials have warned pet owners to keep their cats indoors and dogs on a leash in areas where the disease has been detected

Austria confirmed the nation's first case of H5N1 in a wild bird last month and has since detected several dozen cases in birds, including 29 in Styria.

According to WHO, several tigers and snow leopards in a zoo and several house cats were infected with H5N1 during outbreaks in Asia in 2003 and 2004.

Poland announced that the infected swans were found dead Thursday in Torun, about 120 miles northwest of Warsaw. Samples were being sent to Britain for further tests.

According to the latest WHO figures, the H5N1 strain has killed at least 95 people since 2003, mostly in Asia, and devastated poultry stocks. Scientists are concerned that the virus could mutate into a form easily spread between people, sparking a pandemic.

Meanwhile, a top animal health official with the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said developed countries had responded slowly to bird flu, failing to control the disease in Asia and not doing enough to prepare poor countries, particularly in Africa, for its spread.

"In 2004 we said it will be an international crisis if we don't stop it in Asia, and this is exactly what is happening two years later," said Joseph Domenech, head of FAO's Animal Health Service.

"We were asking for emergency funds and they never came. We are constantly late."

Samples were being sent for further examination in the European Union's laboratory in Weybridge, Britain, he said.

Poland set up a crisis unit in the northern city of Torun where the outbreak was detected. A hygiene-security zone has been erected over a three-kilometer (1.8-mile) radius.

The highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 has spread on rare occasions from birds to humans and has proven deadly in about half of those cases, most of them in Asia where it is still claiming lives.

In Indonesia's capital Jakarata, a 25-year-old woman who was five months pregnant died Monday with symptoms of bird flu after being in close contact with chickens, hospital officials said.

The deepest fear is that the bird flu virus could mix with a human influenza and acquire the capacity to jump from human to human, sparking off the next global flu pandemic.

In Geneva, World Health Organisation experts opened a three-day meeting to refine plans to rapidly detect and contain a potential pandemic even as it erupts.

Pandemic fears have climbed sharply since the emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in China in late 2002 and now H5N1, WHO special adviser on avian influenza Margaret Chan told the health experts.

"Events in recent weeks justify that concern," WHO special adviser on avian influenza Margaret Chan told the health experts.

"H5N1 avian influenza has spread to affect wild and domestic birds in 17 new countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East," Chen told the meeting, most of which is to be held behind closed doors.

Some experts warned that H5N1 was not the only potential source for a future pandemic.

"Even if H5N1 stays in its animal box, this plan would be an investment for the future," said Angus Nicoll of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Besides the human threat, the disease has enormous economic consequences.

Its arrival in Europe has led to a plunge in consumption of poultry.

France, the European Union's largest poultry exporter, reported the disease spreading with 30 incidences of H5N1.

The French government allocated from Monday 52 million euros (63 million dollars) in aid to poultry farmers, whose produce has been totally or partially banned by 46 countries.

In Germany -- where a cat has been confirmed to be the first mammal in Europe affected by H5N1 -- the government said at the weekend it was checking a suspected new case in a wild goose.

In Africa, bird flu has been detected in Nigeria, neighbouring Niger and Egypt. Nigeria has promised protective equipment for a three-billion-euro emergency eradication plan by Niger.

In Asia, China's health ministry was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying Sunday that a 32-year-old man who frequented poultry markets had succumbed to bird flu in Guangdong, the first case in the province.

Hours later, Hong Kong, which suffered the world's first reported major bird flu outbreak among humans in 1997 when six people died, suspended imports of live poultry and pet birds from Guangdong for three weeks.

"He is an urban resident, he had no contact with farms or any poultry from the villages. His only exposure is the wet markets, which has poultry which are supposedly safe for consumption and safe for the public," Hong Kong's health minister York Chow said.

"And Guangdong province is one of the best (in China) in terms of supervising the control of avian flu. Since last year, it has immunized all its poultry through vaccination," he told a news conference.

Guangdong has not reported any outbreaks of the H5N1 avian flu virus in birds over the past year, and the man's death has heightened fears among experts that there might be poultry that are infected by the virus but which are not sickened by it.

Chow said Chinese authorities were investigating if the virus might have undergone any genetic changes and if there were problems with vaccines used in the country.

The man did not seek medical help until he was very sick and he died after spending just four days in hospital, Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.

The government had tested more than 100 people who had been in contact with the man, but none were found to be infected with H5N1, Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua told a news briefing in Beijing.

"Guangdong pays great attention to bird flu," Huang said, adding that Hong Kong did not have to worry about poultry imports from the province. "Human cases still only happen by chance."

The virus has killed 95 people in East Asia and the Middle East since late 2003. Most of the victims contracted the disease directly from sick poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate and spread easily among people, sparking a pandemic.

The virus made its first known jump to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six people.

The city banned live chicken imports, day-old chicks and pet birds from Guangdong after China confirmed late on Sunday that the man died of H5N1.

He was suffering symptoms of the virus, which Indonesian authorities have confirmed has killed 20 Indonesians, she said, adding that he had a history of contact with poultry.

The boy's death follows five recent suspected bird flu deaths: a pregnant woman, 25, on Monday; a 10-year-old Saturday; a brother and sister last Wednesday; and a three-year-old last Tuesday.

The woman was from Jakarta, where most of Indonesia's bird flu deaths have been recorded, but the siblings and 10-year-old were from Central Java's Boyolali district and the three-year-old died in Central Java's Semarang.

Local positive tests, which are usually considered reliable, are sent to a World Health Organisation (WHO)-affiliated laboratory abroad for confirmation.

Indonesia's last confirmed fatality was on February 25.

Meanwhile in Jakarta, five more suspected bird flu patients were admitted overnight at Sulianti Saroso Hospital, the capital's main centre for treating bird flu patients, its deputy director Sardikin Giriputro said.

The five, two of them children, came from several districts in Jakarta and the nearby town of Bekasi in West Java, and had all been in contact with sick chickens, Giriputro said.

Hospital spokesman Ilham Patu said the hospital was now treating a total of seven suspected bird flu patients. Five people were discharged Monday after being cleared, he said.

Infections have been found in birds in 26 of Indonesia's 33 provinces.

Experts fear that H5N1, which has killed more than 90 people since 2003, mostly in Asia, may mutate into a form that can pass between humans, sparking a deadly pandemic.

The death of a 32-year-unemployed man in Guangdong, southern China, reinforces questions over whether surveillance for H5N1 is strong enough. Human cases were also identified in Turkey and Iraq before alerts about the virus in flocks.

Zhong Nanshan, director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, was quoted in Hong Kong newspapers as saying that the latest death "may be an indication that poultry is infected but not showing symptoms. This is even more dangerous and serious because people can get infected without any warning."

Health experts are wondering whether vaccination of poultry is helping to mask the disease. British officials are refusing to place big orders for the vaccines, except as a fall-back for rare and exotic birds, believing that they do not stop birds from carrying disease. But the chief scientist, Sir David King, revealed last week that he had been watching progress in China, where vaccination of birds is most widespread, because of hopes that vaccines being developed there are easier to administer and more effective.

In Styria, southern Austria, three cats from an animal shelter that took in H5N1 infected birds also tested positive for the disease, the second such transfer reported in Europe during the current outbreaks.