Albanian Food and Agricultural Minister Jemin Gjana (R) is informed during a press conference by one of his deputies about the official results on Abania's first case of the H5N1 bird flu virus, in Tirana, Albania, on Wednesday 08 March 2006. The first case of the virus has been found in the city of Saranda, some 300 km south of Tirana on the border with Greece. EPA/MALTON DIBRA

'The worst case is the European Union, which has not even decided how to allocate the amount promised in Beijing,' Bernard Vallat told French parliamentarians, referring to the International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Pandemic Influenza held in the Chinese capital January 17 and 18.

Vallat was responding to questions by a French parliamentary commission on bird flu which recently returned from Senegal and Mali and demanded to know why these two countries had not received any aid to fight the H5N1 bird flu virus.

The head of the commission, Jean-Marie Le Guen, told journalists that the matter involved 'a very serious governmental error by Europe,' which was risking its 'political credibility.'

In an interview published earlier this week in the French daily Liberation, Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said that of the 1.9 billion dollars pledged in Beijing to fight bird flu, his organization had received only 16 million dollars.