BEIJING (AFP) - An international bird flu conference has mobilized 1.9 billion dollars in pledges from countries and organizations for a first-ever global war chest to fight the killer virus which is at risk of becoming a pandemic.

The figure far surpassed the 1.5 billion dollar target of the two-day International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Influenza which ended Wednesday in Beijing and was attended by officials from half the nations on the planet.

"It was a conference of commitment and pledging that really showed solidarity," the UN's coordinator on avian and human influenza, David Nabarro, told reporters. "We've got a fantastic set of pledges from poor countries as well as rich countries. "Even countries that cannot put money into the funding are saying we are going to commit our people and our governments to get the results."

Nearly one billion dollars had been pledged in grants, which would go mainly to poor countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. The other 900 million dollars would come in loans.

The United States was the biggest donor, pledging 334 million dollars, followed by the European Union (EU), which said it would offer 260 million dollars -- including 138 million dollars directly from the 25 member states, with the rest from the European Commission.

Japan committed 159 million dollars, while smaller pledges were made by others including Russia, Australia and China, which co-hosted the event along with the World Bank and the European Commission.

The pledges came after the conference was warned of the immense dangers for the world posed by the bird flu virus, which has killed around 80 people since re-emerging in 2003. With the virus spreading from Asia to the Middle East and now to Europe in the past year, experts feared bird flu could become a pandemic that could kill millions of people.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the conference via video link that the world was not prepared for a pandemic and called for major efforts in stepping up preparations.

"There's no time to waste. Lets ensure we're ready...we are not yet there," Annan said. With the disease killing four people in Turkey this month, the first deaths outside Southeast Asia and China, and a new confirmed death in China Wednesday, the virus was now capable of spreading easily across borders, putting even uninfected regions from the EU to Africa at risk.

"All countries can be affected if a pandemic occurs," World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz said in a televised speech. "All countries share responsibilities to fight the spread of the disease..." Most of the money will be spent on launching public awareness programs, strengthening outbreak detection and response, the slaughter and vaccination of poultry and compensation for farmers.

Money will also be used to stockpile drugs to treat victims and to prepare a currently non-existent human vaccine. The money was desperately needed as many countries, from Indonesia to Eastern European countries, lacked sufficient capability to prevent, detect and respond effectively to outbreaks, officials said.

In many countries, farmers were infected because they did not know the risks of bringing chicken into their homes or of eating or letting their children play with sick poultry, health experts said.

Officials said the next step was to assess funding requests from needy countries and ensure the money is well spent to implement a three-year action plan aimed at keeping bird flu from moving from its current form, mainly transmitted from poultry to humans, to one transmissible among humans.

Transparency will be a condition for receiving funds, officials said. Countries committed themselves to sharing information and biological material in a timely fashion in a joint declaration adopted at the conference.

With the upcoming Lunar New Year this month, officials warned the virus could further spread with the movement of people and the tradition of eating poultry. "For this reason, the movements of animals, products and people from endemic areas to other regions should be strictly monitored," David Harcharik, deputy director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, told the conference.