Germany reported the first known case in Europe of H5N1 bird flu infecting a cat, a worrying development as the virus sweeps past hastily erected protective measures in large parts of the world.

The dead cat was found on the Baltic island of Ruegen, where the highly pathogenic form of H5N1 bird flu was detected earlier this month, said Germany's national veterinary laboratory, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute.

More tests were being carried out to determine if the cat had the H5N1 strain which can kill humans.

"It has long been known from Asia that cats can be infected if they eat infected birds," said laboratory chief Thomas Mettenleiter.

The H5N1 strain of the virus has been detected in a leopard, tigers, civet cats and two domestic cats in Thailand. But the World Health Organization said in 2004 that the infection of cats was unlikely to enhance the risks to humans.

Experts fear that H5N1, which has killed more than 90 people since 2003, may mutate into a form that can pass between humans, launching a pandemic that could kill millions.

In the bird population, the disease was spreading further across Europe and Africa.

France began vaccinating 700,000 domestic ducks and geese on farms after it announced at the weekend the first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in a European Union poultry farm.

The commercial repercussions of the French outbreak were driven home Tuesday as the government announced that some 43 countries were now restricting or banning imports of poultry and poultry products from France.

Then, late Tuesday, the French agriculture ministry confirmed another case of H5N1 in a wild swan in the eastern Ain department, bringing to 18 the total number of wild swans and ducks known to be infected with the deadly bird flu.

Sweden for the first time detected in ducks an unidentified strain of bird flu, feared to be the H5N1 strain.

Initial tests at Sweden's the National Veterinary Institute "show that we're probably talking about the same virus that has been spreading in Russia and China," said the Swedish agriculture board.

Elsewhere, H5N1 was detected for the first time in Bosnia, the southern German state of Bavaria and a poultry farm in southwestern Russia where 103,000 birds were reported to have died in a week.

Britain said it was unlikely to escape.

"I would anticipate that avian flu will arrive at some point in the UK," said British chief scientific advisor Professor David King, predicting that the disease would stay for at least five years.

"We are talking about the possibility of this disease being endemic here in the UK as it did in China. It is a long-term factor," he told the BBC.

But world experts fretted mostly about Africa, where many countries are ill equipped to detect or impede the spread of the disease.

Ethiopian officials were testing some of more than 6,000 chickens that died suddenly on a poultry farm in Endibir 175 kilometers (108 miles) southwest of Addis Ababa.

The government of Niger confirmed its first cases of the H5N1 virus in two ducks and set up two protection zones to try to contain the outbreak, including the slaughtering of poultry in the immediate affected area.

In neighbouring Nigeria -- where more than 300,000 infected fowl have already died or been slaughtered -- H5N1 was detected in two more states in the north.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the authorities said initial tests on 400 dead chickens showed no sign of bird flu. Cases of H5N1 have also been reported in Egypt.

Veterinarian experts from more than 50 countries gathered in Paris said poor countries must be helped to contain the disease.

"All countries in the world need to control the virus, irrespective of their national economies, as only one defaulting country can seriously endanger the rest of the planet," the World Organisation for Animal Health said at the end of a two-day gathering.

Human deaths have already been recorded after the disease jumped from bird to human in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam. Some 40 countries have now been hit by the H5N1 strain.

OIE director-general Bernard Vallat warned that bird flu was transforming from "epidemic to pandemic".

"With the exception of Australia and New Zealand, which are not hit by bird migrations from affected areas, the rest of the world is directly exposed... Various clues have raised the fear it could contaminate the American continent," he told France's Le Monde newspaper.

PHOTO CAPTION

A helper of the German relief organisation THW carries bags with dead swans, at the Tetzitzer See lake near Tribbevitz on the Baltic island of Ruegen. Germany reported the first known case in Europe of H5N1 bird flu infecting a cat, a worrying new development as the virus sweeps past protective measures in large swathes of the world. (AFP)

Reuters