BRITAIN: Sensational claims that Diana, Princess of Wales, feared a plot to kill her in a road accident have reignited demands for a public inquiry into the Paris crash which claimed her life.
Her former butler, Mr Paul Burrell, claims the princess wrote to him shortly after her divorce from Prince Charles and just 10 months before her death in August 1997, naming someone she believed was "planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry".
The Daily Mirror newspaper, which is publishing extracts from Mr Burrell's book - A Royal Duty, due on sale next week - did not name this person for legal reasons. However an editorial described yesterday's front-page splash as "one of the most dramatic and devastating" published in the paper's history.
While saying he did not know if the letter and Diana's death were connected, the paper's editor, Piers Morgan, said the revelation should prompt an announcement that an inquest would be held without further delay.
A coroner's spokesman reiterated that an inquest would be held in due course, while Clarence House, for the Prince of Wales, and a spokesman for Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, declined to comment. A spokesman for Harrods department store owner, Mr Mohamed al Fayed, said: "This adds weight to his long-standing calls for a public inquiry."
Diana and Mr al Fayed's son, Dodi, were killed on August 31st, 1997, when a car driven by Henri Paul crashed in a tunnel in Paris.
A French inquiry found that Mr Paul, who also died, had taken a cocktail of drink and drugs and was driving too fast.
However Mr al Fayed has always maintained that his son and the princess - who he claimed had planned to marry - were the victims of a plot executed by the British secret services, with the knowledge of at least one senior member of the royal family.
Some seasoned royal-watchers are asking why the former butler - who was acquitted of charges of theft from the princess's estate last year - did not reveal the existence of the letter immediately after the Paris crash, during the French inquiry or at his own trial.
Mr Burrell said: "Over the last six years, particularly in the last 11 months since my trial ended at the Old Bailey, I have had time to reflect on the extraordinary events that I have witnessed." He wrote the book because someone had to "stand in the princess's corner and fight for her" now that she could not do so herself.
"Imagine if that letter had been penned to you by a loved one and then within the next year they died in a car crash. In trying to make sense of it, you tend to waver from considering it a wild coincidence to more bizarre, paranoid conclusions."
Mr Burrell said it was the lack of an inquest - and the attempt by the Crown Prosecution Service and Scotland Yard "to destroy my reputation" with the theft trial - which "led me to make the contents of that note public".