A 43-year-old Frenchman may have been infected with the potentially lethal bird flu virus while on holiday in Thailand, authorities said today.

The man returned to the Indian Ocean island of Reunion seven days ago after a week in Thailand and was admitted to hospital on Saturday, complaining of weakness and headaches.

On Monday, after he started coughing, doctors took nose and throat samples and tested them for the H5N1 bird flu strain blamed for more than 60 human deaths in Asia.

"The first was doubtful, the second positive," authorities from the French island said in a statement today, adding that there was thus a "suspicion of flu of avian origin."

If secondary tests in Paris prove conclusive, the man, who has not been named, would be the first foreign tourist to have been infected by bird flu in South-East Asia. The results should be known by the end of the week.

The World Health Organisation said that it was contacting health officials in Thailand to establish whether the patient had come into direct contact with infected flocks.

A WHO spokeswoman said: "We are expecting more cases to be reported as everyone is on alert for the symptoms. If the test results are confirmed it does not mean a human pandemic has started. It could mean that this person has been in contact with infected birds."

A doctor at the Bellepierre hospital in Reunion's main city, Saint Denis, told the AFP news agency that the man, who has not been named, was being treated with anti-viral drugs and was doing well.

He has, however, been quarantined, to reduce the risk of a possible mutation between the bird flu virus and a common human flu virus - which scientists fear could prompt a global pandemic.

The doctor speculated that the man might have only a "benign form" of bird flu. But 19 other people who went on the same trip to Thailand have been questioned about their health, two of whom have shown "flu-type symptoms" and are undergoing tests. Reunion Island is located east of Madagascar, off the African coast.

News of the possible infection came as Margaret Beckett told MPs today that a second dead parrot found in a private Essex quarantine facility had contracted the H5N1 bird flu strain.

The Environment and Rural Affairs Secretary said that her department now believed that the virus came via Taiwan, but added that "it was important to keep an open mind" on the source. Taiwan has denied that the virus originated there.

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