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Blair wanted Di to be ambassador
07/07/2007 10:47 - (SA)
London - The forthcoming diaries of Tony Blair's former press chief contain details about how the former British prime minister wanted princess Diana to be an ambassador for Britain, the Daily Mirror said on Saturday.
Blair secretly met the princess before and after he became prime minister in 1997, the newspaper said, quoting a "well-placed source" who had seen parts of its former political editor Alastair Campbell's book The Blair Years.
But the meetings were so sensitive they had to be held away from the heart of British political life, Westminster, because as a member of the publicly apolitical royal family Diana could have been accused of politicking, it said.
"Campbell's diaries tell how Blair and Diana always held their private meetings away from Westminster," the source was quoted as saying of the book, which is published Monday.
"It's pretty clear they were discussing some kind of new role for her. He thought she could do a brilliant job as a kind of ambassador for his vision of a modernised Britain.
'Bowled over by Diana'
"The princess was intrigued by the idea. She liked the image of the country Blair wanted to project and thought she could make a contribution. She was very excited about it."
The source told the newspaper that Blair's wife, Cherie, sometimes attended the meetings, and on occasions Campbell was also there. The diaries say he was "completely bowled over" by her, he added.
Diana - an anti-landmines campaigner and supporter of Aids charities - was killed in a car crash in Paris on August 31 1997 leading to an unprecedented public outpouring of grief.
Blair's tribute about her being "the people's princess" is one of his most memorable and was seen as capturing the public mood.
Campbell was suspected of writing it, but the source said: "It doesn't look like that to me."
The source said the diaries go into detail about the week following Diana's death, describing them as the "real-life account" of the film The Queen, which won Helen Mirren a best actress award at this year's Oscars.
Discussions with Bush
The book also goes into detail about Blair's discussions with US President George W Bush in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the former prime minister's role in the Good Friday peace deal in Northern Ireland.
Campbell's diaries, which he kept from mid-1994 when Blair became Labour Party leader to 2003 when he quit, are eagerly awaited as they are the first memoirs of a senior government figure since Blair stood down.
Extracts - laced with swear words - have already been aired, notably during an inquiry into the death of an eminent scientist following a BBC report the government had exaggerated claims about Iraq's weapons capability.
- AFP
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