Indonesia became the sixth country in Asia to confirm an outbreak of deadly bird flu, as the World Health Organization warned Sunday the virus could be resistant to basic human influenza drugs.

The disease has already affected millions of chickens in Indonesia, said Sofjan Sudardjat, a senior agriculture official. But the virus has not yet crossed over to humans, he said.

Indonesian officials had earlier denied the diseases' presence, but the Indonesian Veterinarians Association said several independent investigations had revealed that bird flu had already killed millions of chickens over the past several months.

Asia is on a region-wide health alert, with governments slaughtering millions of chickens to contain outbreaks in Thailand, Viet Nam, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Viet Nam has slaughtered more than 3 million chickens while Thailand has exterminated some 9 million. On Sunday, the Thai government enlisted hundreds of soldiers and 60 prisoners to help with the mass cull.

Scientists believe people get the disease through contact with sick birds, raising concerns it might mutate and link with regular influenza to create a form that could be transmitted from person to person, fostering the next human flu pandemic.

Concerns are particularly high because the bird flu virus caught by humans appears resistant to amantadine and rimantadine, the cheaper anti-viral drugs used to treat regular influenza.

"This is a disease that's appearing in the developing world. So what you want is affordable drugs," WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said. "Should this move from human to human — and it hasn't yet, I want to stress that — then it's going to be a real challenge."

So far, there has been no evidence of person-to-person transmission. Farms across Asia have been devastated but Viet Nam and Thailand are the only countries this year where humans have caught the avian flu. There have been six confirmed deaths in Viet Nam and one suspected fatality in Thailand.

According to WHO, the virus is resistant to key anti-influenza drugs, and an effective vaccine is probably more than six months away.

But "that's too late for the influenza season in Asia," said Peter Cordingley, a regional spokesman for WHO.

The Jakarta Post reported Monday that Indonesian officials may have covered up the outbreak there at the behest of politically connected businessmen who feared it would harm their interests.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, faced with similar accusations that he covered up the outbreak, said his government had suspected that bird flu had struck his nation a "couple of weeks" ago. But he said he didn't tell the public because he feared mass panic.

The outbreak has devastated Thailand's chicken export industry — the world's fourth largest. Thailand shipped about 500,000 tons of chicken worth $1.3 billion in 2003.

Many countries have imposed bans on poultry products from Thailand, and the prime minister said Saturday that overall exports could drop by as much as 0.4 percentage points and the gross domestic product could slip by as much as 0.1 percentage points as a result.

Thaksin met Sunday with hundreds of worried chicken farmers, some of whom alleged his government tried to cover up the outbreak to protect poultry exports. Until Friday, officials had insisted that millions of birds were sick with other diseases.

But Thaksin acknowledged Sunday that officials suspected a bird flu outbreak for weeks, and said he failed to inform the public of the government's concerns because tests for the virus had not yet been completed.

On Wednesday, Thailand will host a meeting of foreign, agriculture and health ministers from bird flu-affected countries and international influenza experts to devise strategies they might use to thwart the spread of the disease.

Thailand has also planned to send representatives abroad to allay customer worries.

In Viet Nam, an 8-year-old girl was being treated for bird flu in a Ho Chi Minh City hospital. Two boys, aged six and seven, are seriously sick in Thailand and two others are thought to have been exposed.

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