Some experts have worried about the ability of poorer nations to respond to the bird flu threat, and warned that richer countries must help them with vaccinations, expertise and anti-viral drug stockpiling.

The leaders at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Busan, South Korea, also promised to boost surveillance and information-sharing, and to build a regional register of experts that could advise countries to combat the virus.

Fears of a global flu pandemic spawned by the bird flu virus sweeping Asia pushed the issue to near the top of the agenda at the summit, which brought together US President George W. Bush, China's Hu Jintao and 19 other leaders from countries already hit by or at risk of outbreaks.

The leaders endorsed a plan that "commits our economies to effective surveillance, transparency and openness and close domestic, regional and international coordination and collaboration" on bird flu, the leaders said in their final statement.

Monitoring Programs and Research

Measures adopted included plans to develop a list of "available and funded" experts in the region and to build "capabilities for responding rapidly to pandemic influenza in its early stages," they said. A computer simulation exercise would be conducted early next year to test regional responses and communication networks.

Australia and Japan immediately pledged new resources to the fight.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Canberra would contribute Australian dollars 100 million (US$73 million; euro62 million) over four years to fund regional bird flu initiatives and to international health agencies, including A$4 million (US$2.9 million; euro2.5 million) for the simulation exercise.

Japan pledged US$2 million (euro1.7 million) to the World Health Organization and another US$800,000 (euro680,000) to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization to fund monitoring programs and research into bird flu.

Some experts have worried about the ability of poorer nations to respond to the bird flu threat, and warned that richer countries must help them with vaccinations, expertise and anti-viral drug stockpiling.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the leaders discussed a Canadian plan for wealthier countries to contribute to a fund that would pay compensation to farmers with infected poultry flocks, encouraging them not to hide outbreaks, but it was not adopted.

"If poor farmers know they will lose income they will be very reluctant to" report outbreaks, Abdullah told a news conference. "They will not be ready to cooperate. If they are to do it, [there] must be some means of compensation."

Next Human Flu Pandemic

Officials this week expressed concern that countries may try to hide or downplay bird flu outbreaks to protect their reputations or their economies from repercussions. China and Thailand were heavily criticized for suppressing news about severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, outbreaks when it swept Asia in 2003.

Fears of a human pandemic have risen in recent days after China, the world's most populous country, announced its first human cases, including deaths, after repeated outbreaks in poultry in the past month.

Chinese President Hu Jintao "told the leaders that China pays great attention to the prevention and control of bird flu and has taken a series of positive measures to curb the avian influenza," the official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday, citing Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing..

At least 67 people have died in Asia from bird flu, in Vietnam, Thailand, China, Indonesia -- all APEC members -- and Cambodia.

Health experts say the H5N1 strain of bird flu sweeping Asia could be the source of the next human flu pandemic if it mutates into a form easily passed between humans. Most of the bird flu deaths so far have been traced to contact with sick birds.

Bird flu has resulted in the deaths or destruction of some 150 million birds in Asia, though containment measures have failed to stop outbreaks or to prevent the virus' spread by migrating birds to eastern Europe and the Middle East.