A girl with flu-like symptoms has died in a Chinese village where a bird flu outbreak had been reported, a Hong Kong newspaper said on Thursday, but Beijing said it had received no reports of human cases.

Three people on a French island off Africa were being tested on Wednesday in what appeared to be the first suspected human cases outside Asia of bird flu, which experts fear could mutate to spread easily from human to human and become a pandemic.

Indonesia was investigating possible new bird flu cases on the holiday island of Bali after the death of several domestic fowl, an agriculture ministry official said.

He Yin, 12, and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago after eating a chicken that had died from an unspecified illness in the Chinese village of Wantang, southern Hunan province, the South China Morning Post reported.

So far there was no evidence linking the Chinese girl's death to the outbreak of bird flu and none of the adults in her family had shown any flu symptoms, the newspaper said. Doctors told her family she had died from fever.

China's Xinhua new agency said the health ministry had received no reports of human cases of the disease and a ministry spokesman said he doubted the girl's death was due to bird flu.

"We haven't received any relevant report on that and I have no information if health authorities there have done autopsy on the girl either," he told Reuters.

"To be honest, we don't even know how the chicken died."

China reported the Hunan outbreak this week following cases in Inner Mongolia in the north and Anhui province in the east. It said the outbreaks had been brought under control.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said his government was taking effective measures to prevent the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain, including massive culling of birds, quarantines and vaccinations of residents in areas where there were outbreaks.

The World Health Organisation's China representative said it had contacted the health ministry for more information on the Hunan girl.

"The key is, the moment you have an outbreak in poultry, you have to intensify human surveillance in that area," Henk Bekedam told Reuters, adding China would probably see more outbreaks.

"In the winter, the virus can survive longer outside its own host ... so we expect more cases, especially in this part of the world," he said.

Bekedam added that in Europe, the virus could still be eliminated, but Asia's best hope was that it would be contained.

South pacific

H5N1 has killed more than 60 people in four countries in Asia and been found among birds in Croatia, Romania, Turkey and Russia, but no human cases have been reported in Europe.

There is no evidence yet that the disease can be transmitted easily among humans, but experts fear it is only a matter of time. China, with its huge numbers of both humans and poultry, often living close together, is seen as a major area of risk.

The Asian Development Bank says even a relatively mild pandemic could cost Asia up to 110 billion US dollar from the effects of reduced consumption, investment and trade.

South Pacific leaders ended a two-day summit in Port Moresby on Thursday with a plan to pool resources to combat bird flu.

Australia, the largest member of the 16-nation Pacific Forum, will contribute 8 million A dollar to fight an outbreak of the disease in nations like Papua New Guinea, which shares a border with Indonesia where four people have died of avian flu.

Other deaths have been reported in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

A senior World Bank official said on Wednesday that officials from all over the globe would meet on November 7-9 in Geneva to discuss setting up a global fund to tackle the threat.

French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said on Wednesday that three tourists who had visited a Thai bird zoo were being tested for bird flu back home on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

But he cautioned against any "dramatization" of the situation: "You have to put things in their proper place. What we are talking about today in Europe, is about the risk of a disease, of a virus that affects animals," he said.

Thai government officials said they had not been told by France which park the tourists visited. However, Chawan Thanhikorn, deputy chief of the National Parks department, said there had been no reports of birds dying.

Croatia confirmed on Wednesday that H5N1 had killed some dead swans found by a pond there last week.

Germany and Greece were also testing dead birds.

Britain has said an imported parrot that died of H5N1 might not have been the only bird in quarantine to have had the virus, and others were being tested. The European Union said on Tuesday it was banning the import of captive birds as pets.

Governments around the world are nervously monitoring borders, testing arriving wild birds and clamping down on the import and movement of birds and poultry, with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia among the latest to announce special measures.

WHO says all but six of its 52 European member states have developed plans to fight an influenza pandemic.

PHOTO CAPTION

Chinese health inspectors walk next to a blocked road in the suburbs of Tianchang city of Anhui province, October 26, 2005. (Reuters)