DANANG, Vietnam - Asian countries hardest hit by avian flu would keep ringing alarm bells in a push for transparency and international cooperation to prevent a possible global pandemic, health officials said on Friday.

"Any one single day of delaying our efforts in controlling this means higher cost and bigger loss," He Changchui, Asia Pacific representative of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at a regional bird flu conference in Vietnam.

Health and agriculture ministers from the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) agreed to an "action plan" that promotes early detection, sharing biological specimens, fighting illegal chicken trade and reforms of poultry production.

"Prevention is better than cure and that is our philosophy, our policy," Vietnam deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan said.

Most chicken and duck raising in Asia happens in village backyards, where it is more difficult to monitor disease than in commerical farm settings.

The May 4-6 gathering in Vietnam's central city of Danang was the latest in a series of conferences as the highly-pathogenic H5N1 virus has rapidly spread to birds and people in several continents after re-emerging in Asia in late 2003.

Scientists fear the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form that jumps easily between people and start a global flu pandemic. In its present form, the virus is difficult for humans to contract and most victims received the virus directly from sick birds.

It has killed 114 people out of 206 infections in nine countries, four of them members of APEC. Group members Vietnam and Indonesia have had most deaths, with 42 and 24 respectively.

APEC, which says it accounts for 47 percent of world trade and includes economic powers the United States and China, emphasised improving cooperation and communication among members.

"We all want to avoid a global pandemic and this conference reinforced the need for prompt reporting and transparency," said John Lange, U.S. special representative on avian flu.

In an effort to address chicken smuggling that is rife on Vietnam's borders and in other countries, the plan promotes poultry trade according to international standards.

Vietnam Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat said smuggling on its borders with China and Cambodia was caused by a discrepency in prices and Vietnam needed to adjust domestic production to make prices more reasonable.

International health authorities have described the movement of poultry as one of the biggest causes of the virus spreading.