"If there was a flu pandemic tomorrow we would not be ready. The clock is ticking and when the pandemic strikes it will be too late," said WHO spokeswoman Christine McNab.

Despite warnings at the United Nations by US President George W. Bush and French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin calling for international cooperation to confront the "first pandemic of the 21st century", the international community was far from prepared.

"There is very good momentum, but a lot of work remains to be done," McNab said.

Of the 192 members of the UN just 40 countries had drawn up detailed plans for combatting an outbreak in humans of a mutation of the H5N1 virus which could, like the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, kill millions of people.

For the WHO it is question of when, not if, the virus crosses over to a strain affecting humans, experts said.

"The question is, 'When is it going to happen?' I don't think anybody has the answer to it... We have to be on the lookout for any time, any day," the WHO specialist on the virus, Margaret Chan, said in July.

The United Nations has called on its member states to make preparations with a document entitled "Responding to the avian influenza pandemic threat: recommended strategic actions."

Health professionals say an outbreak would appear in three phases:

- the prepandemic phase, that needs to be countered by a sophisticated warning system and information sharing so as to detect the first changes in the virus's behaviour;

- an "emerging phase";

- the "declared pandemic phase" when the virus rages unchecked across national borders.

"Since late 2003, the world has moved closer to a pandemic than any time since 1968... given the constantly changing nature of influenza viruses, the timing and severity of the next pandemic cannot be predicted," the WHO document says.

The countries most at risk, with poorly developed health and veterinary services and a lack of laboratories, would be unable to cope or the undertake vaccinations or distribute required anti-viral drugs.

"On present trends, neither of these interventions will be available in adequate quantities or equitably distributed at the start of a pandemic and for many months thereafter," the report says.

Last month, the WHO warned that the current world production of some 300 million vaccine doses per year would be insufficient to cope with a pandemic and that it would be impossible to increase output rapidly.

It has begun stocking vaccine, signing a contract with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche for 30 million doses that could treat three million people.

The organisation is also concerned about about the inequalities between the developed and underdeveloped countries: the former are better prepared, but it is the latter where the outbreak is most likely to occur.

Ninety percent of global influenza vaccine production is located in Europe and North America.

Since world leaders voiced concerned at the UN in New York, Italy has drawn up a 50 million euro program measures to both prevent and counter an outbreak and Canada has announced intentions to stage a global summit of health ministers.

French laboratory Sanofi Pasteur on Thursday signed a contract with the US government to produce an experimental vaccine targetting the H5N1 virus.

But the virus continues to claim lives: a 37-year-old Indonesian died Friday, taking to 63 the number of victims of bird flu since its discovery in Southeast Asia in 2003.

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