Washington, Oct. 7 (Reuters): Officials from 80 countries gathered today to come up with plans to quickly fight the next deadly flu pandemic while President George W. Bush urged pharmaceutical executives to focus on influenza vaccines.

The US state department sponsored the closed-door meeting of delegates from around the world, including experts from UN agencies and the European Union.

“There is no issue more important right now,” Kent Hill, an assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development, told the opening session.

Experts have been warning for years that the H5N1 avian influenza is the biggest current health threat to the world but policy efforts to battle it have only reached a peak in recent weeks.

Bush was holding his own meeting today with the chief executive officers of several companies that make vaccines to talk about ways to encourage more drug-makers to get into or stay in the uncertain business of making influenza vaccines.

The bird flu virus has killed at least 60 people in four Asian nations since late 2003 and has killed or forced the destruction of tens of millions of poultry. Experts say the H5N1 strain is mutating steadily and fear it eventually will acquire the changes it needs to spread easily from person to person.

If it does, they say, it will sweep around the world in months and could kill millions.

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan called on world leaders yesterday to pool resources, including anti-viral drugs and vaccines, to ensure that all countries are ready to fight an epidemic. Only 40 of the World Health Organisation’s 192 member countries have drawn up pandemic preparedness plans, according to Margaret Chan, the WHO’s top official for the pandemic.

But experts also stressed that there are ways to stop the epidemic among poultry.