Iran rejects reports of human bird flu cases

TEHRAN, May 27 (Reuters) Iran's Health Ministry today said the country had no human cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, dismissing statements by a medical official and lawmaker that early tests showed a third person had died of it.

A senior medical official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that preliminary tests in the northwestern city of Kermanshah showed a 30-year-old man died on Wednesday morning from H5N1 bird flu.

He said this would be the third death after a 41-year-old man and his 26-year-old sister were also shown by preliminary tests to have died of bird flu in Kermanshah, which lies some 100 km from the Iraqi border.

The World Health Organisation said on Thursday it had asked Iran for details on the tests run on the two dead pneumonia patients that the government said were negative for H5N1.

Kermanshah's parliamentarian Jahanbakhsh Amini was quoted by the Etemad-e Melli newspaper saying: ''Preliminary tests on three members of a family who died in a suspicious manner in Kermanshah were positive.'' However, Amini told Reuters these samples were then sent to Tehran where laboratories reported they were negative.

The Health Ministry said no ''credible'' tests had delivered a positive result on H5N1.

''The Health Ministry denies any news of bird flu cases in Kermanshah,'' it said in a statement.

REUTERS SY PM1815