Di could have had protection

2007-11-22 16:11

London - A French official suggested after the car crash that killed Princess Diana that she could have received some discreet surveillance and security protection in Paris if authorities had known she was there, a former British Embassy official said on Thursday.

Keith Moss, who was the consul-general in Paris at the time of the princess' fatal car crash in 1997, said the comment came from a French citizen who he believed was associated with the country's diplomatic protection service. Moss could not recall the man's name or title.

Moss said the man approached him in an area of the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital where dignitaries, including the French president, had gathered after the crash.

Discreet surveillance

"At some point in the conversation he asked me whether we knew that the Princess of Wales was in France, and if we did know, why his services had not been informed," Moss testified at the British inquest into the death of Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed.

Had they known, the man added, the French could have "conducted discreet surveillance of security coverage."

Moss was asked at the inquest whether the official had suggested that if this had been done, the princess might not have been killed. "That was the inference," he said.

Fayed's father, Mohamed Al Fayed, has alleged that British agents working at the embassy knew about the visit and were part of a plot against the couple directed by Prince Philip.

Moss said he and then British Ambassador Michael Jay had not known Diana was in Paris.

The inquest - required by British law when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes - began earlier this year and had been delayed for 10 years because of two exhaustive investigations by French and British police.

- AP