BRUSSELS: European bird flu experts were due to hold an emergency meeting on Friday, a day after health officials confirmed what many had long feared was inevitable - the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain from Asia to Europe.

The European Commission said the meeting would start at 0830 GMT and look at the risk migratory birds might pose for the EU.

"The experts' groups will then issue recommendations on the potential risk for humans in contact with such birds," it said in a statement.

The World Health Organization sought to calm fears, saying all evidence so far showed that the H5N1 virus does not spread easily from birds to infect humans. It urged countries hit by the outbreak to monitor poultry and people.

Meanwhile, British scientists were also scrutinizing bird flu samples from Romania to determine whether the virus found in three ducks in the Danube Delta last week was H5N1, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003.

Romania sent the samples to a British laboratory on Thursday afternoon, and Britain's chief vet said she expected the final results to be known sometime on Friday.

EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou said on Thursday a bird flu outbreak in Turkey was indeed H5N1 and that Europe should prepare for a pandemic.

H5N1 is considered the biggest direct disease threat to humanity. Experts estimate that, if it acquires the ability to infect people easily and spread from person to person efficiently, it will make more than 25 million people seriously ill and kill as many as 7 million.

France urged calm on Friday to fight the threat.

"It is something which must be taken seriously. Everything must be done so we are completely mobilised," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told Europe 1 radio.

"We must not give in to panic," he said.

European countries tightened border controls on poultry and poultry products but fear the real threat may come from the skies as returning migratory birds bring the virus home.

Avian flu is currently transmitted to humans only if they eat or live in close contact with infected birds. But scientists say the H5N1 strain is mutating towards a form that could pass between humans.

Migratory birds, usually wild ducks, are a natural reservoir of avian influenza viruses and do not usually become sick when infected. Domestic poultry, including chickens and turkeys, die quickly when infected.

EU veterinary experts are considering whether to impose a ban on outdoor poultry in high risk areas in European wetlands, to prevent contact with wild birds.

(China Daily 10/15/2005 page11)